The College of Charleston's Department of Theatre and Dance will launch an original podcast, Istoria, as part of its production season. Adapting the theatrical canon into modern stories, students will work as writers, actors, audio engineers, sound designers, graphic designers and more to produce an original narrative series based on a new pilot by award-winning writer and College of Charleston 2009 alumnus and adjunct lecturer Michael Smallwood.
Sticking to this season’s theme “Old is New Again,” Smallwood began developing a modern audio drama using inspiration from stories like La Boheme and Lord of the Flies. “As we’ve built out the rest of the season, we’ve moved past a lot of those early inspirations into an original story, but those kernels were there to give the show a sense of connection to some theatrical and literary classics,” details Smallwood. The story, set on a spaceship, follows a group of people who have just been taken out of a cryo sleep. Still over 100 years from their destination, they will be forced to navigate hunger, paranoia, and struggle for power as they figure out what really happened and how to survive.
While podcasting is a new and exciting medium, it does come with its own challenges. “‘Show, don’t tell’ is at the heart of dramatic storytelling, but it’s completely inverted when it comes to podcasting. It’s all 'tell.' So, we’ve had to be really smart, careful and clever about how we relay the information to the audience when we can’t show them anything without defaulting to just straight narration,” notes Smallwood.
Not only will the podcast provide entertainment for listeners, but it will also provide a learning experience for the students working on it. “The podcast gives our actors a chance to work in a new medium and style, and it affords our writers a chance to flex their creativity, their skills and their collaborative talents,” Smallwood states.
Listeners can find the first episode of Istoria on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025, through all major podcasting platforms. Subsequent episodes will be released weekly throughout the spring season. More information can be found at go.charleston.edu/nowplaying.
