Audible announces audio theater project

Put the theater in your pocket. Or your purse. Or wherever you keep your phone or tablet.

That is the goal behind the latest move from audio book and podcast company Audible, which this week was to announce its first round of commissions for playwrights-15 emerging theater writers chosen by an advisory board of heavy hitters including Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage ("Sweat"), actress Annette Bening, Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and playwright David Henry Hwang ("M. Butterfly").

The writers, including Leah Nanako Winkler and Lauren Gunderson, were awarded grants to pen one- and two-person audio plays. The grants come from a $5-million fund set up by Audible.

Winkler received an email in August informing her of the commission, she said by phone from the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Ky., where her play "God Said This" is premiering. "I was on the Metro-North [Railroad, in New York], and I just started bawling."

Although the size of the commission has not been disclosed, Winkler said it's large enough to "make a huge difference in a playwright's salary."

Money isn't the only perk. Playwrights have been given full creative control, and they're encouraged to stay involved when the plays are cast and recorded. They are also invited to work at Audible's campus in Newark, N.J.

There are no restrictions, Winkler said, except the idea that they are writing "for the ears." Winkler sees that as an opportunity.

"This will all be in the audience's imagination. It's an exciting new way to tell a story," she said. "It takes the craft beyond location and allows anyone with a smartphone or speakers to hear it where they are."

Audible CEO Don Katz acknowledged that radio dramas have been around for nearly 100 years, but he emphasized that what Audible is creating is something different. It's performative audio for the digital era, and Katz said the contributions of these playwrights could be transformative to industry's landscape, which already includes established purveyors of recorded theater such as L.A. Theatre Works.

With the emerging playwrights fund, Katz wants to usher in a new golden age of audio drama using Audible's reach and global subscription base. "You are literally going to have your words inside the brains of millions of people driving to work. It's completely private and intimate," he said.

Katz, a former journalist and author, founded Audible in 1995, and the company was purchased for $300 million by Amazon in 2008. In 2012 it launched "The A-List Collection" featuring Hollywood stars such as Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth and Dustin Hoffman reading unabridged audio books.

Katz hopes the playwrights fund does for audio plays what "The A-List Collection" did for audio books: Shine a bright spotlight. That exposure, in turn, is meant to attract the best writers and performers in the business to participate-and garner large, diverse audiences.

Audible intends to stage live productions of these plays. Katz likes the idea of limited runs that will allow producers to recruit big-name actors. The theater business is dependent on ticket sales, so if overhead is high, producers often need a long run to recoup costs. But in the digital realm, those cost calculations are different.

Upcoming Events