HEAR Now Festival 2018

Photos, programs, and sounds albums for the 2018 HEAR Now Festival held on June 7-10, 2018.

2018 FESTIVAL FEATURED GUESTS INCLUDE:

Scott Brick - Mark Twain Mentor and reads at A Story Well-Told

PJ Ochlan Performs in Blood Cotton and AUDIO Tonight!

Judith Walcutt - Mark Time Awards & Friday Night Family Fun

Phil Proctor Celebrating His Work at HEAR Now

David Ossman - The Mark Time Awards

Dion Graham Directs Blood Cotton

Julia Whelan Hosts AUDIO Tonight! & reads at A Story Well-Told

Robin Miles performs in Blood Cotton & AUDIO Tonight!

Dr. Ken Perlin - INNOVATIONS: Future Reality

Neil Hellegers Directs ShakesRumble and reads at A Story Well-Told

Author Jeff Strand hosts the ABR Audiobook Awards

Bob Kaliban at Simpson House

Melinda Peterson - Workshop 101

Tony Brewer - SFX Artist & Workshop 101

Chris Romero - VR/AR/XR Sound

Kc Wayland - Workshop 101

Steven Jay Cohen - Workshop 102

Marjorie Van Halteren - 2018 Corwin Award Winner for Excellence in Audio Theatre

Tavia Gilbert - Workshop 101 & reads at A Story Well-Told

Brian Price - Workshop 101 & The Independent Producer

Geof Prysirr - Extending Our Vocal Lives & Host of A Story Well-Told

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The following is a simple breakdown of the Festival's daily activities and does not include ALL sessions.
Please refer to the interactive schedule above for more complete information and complete.

                                               THURSDAY, June 7, 2018

10am - 12:30 - Holiday Inn Ballroom  -- Communicating Through Story-telling: Raising Our Voices and Extending Our Vocal Lives

10am - 5pm -- Workshop 101 CREATING THE DRAMATIC PODCAST begins. Click here for Workshop 101 details.

10am - 5pm -- Workshop 102 CONNECTING CREATORS WITH AUDIENCE begins. Click here for Workshop 102 details.

5:15pm - 6:00pm -- Celebrating Mark Twain at Prospero's Books

7:00pm - 8:30pm -- Innovations Festival Opener: – Dr. Ken Perlin  The Sound of Future Reality  - When VR and AR Meet   Kansas City Park Plaza Library Truman Auditorium

9:00pm - 10PM  -- Mark Time Awards At HEAR Now - Holiday Inn Ballroom
David Ossman and Phil Proctor, along with special Firesign guests, present the 22nd annual awards for best audio theatre production in English -- new categories this year ...

10pm - midnight – First Night Festival AFTER PARTY - Simpson House
    Celebrating Audio Performers - sponsored by SAG AFTRA

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                                                FRIDAY, June 8, 2018
 
9:30am - 4:30pm  -- NATF Playhouse.  Cinemark
             This year's newest and BEST audio fiction and a celebration. Along with presenting submitted works there will be special presentations.
           
        Special NATF Playhouse Session
            12-1:30pm A retrospective of voice actor Phil Proctor highlighting his new podcasts/ his movie & TV voices / and his career with Firesign
 
10am - 5pm -- Workshop 101 CREATING THE DRAMATIC PODCAST continues. Click here for Workshop 101 details.

10am - 5pm -- Workshop 102 CONNECTING CREATORS WITH AUDIENCE continuess. Click here for Workshop 102 details.

5:15pm - 6:00pm -- Celebrating Mark Twain at Prospero's Books

6:30 - 7:30pm -- Friday Night Family Fun -- Children's reading program at Kansas City Public Library's Park Plaza Truman Auditorium.
                
7:30 - 8:15pm -- ABR Awards Cocktail Party - Simpson House Click here for information.
                           Sponsored by Author's Republic

8:15-9:45pm ABR Audiobook Awards at Bragg Auditorium (in All Soul's) Click here for information.
                        Hosted by Jeff Strand -- with special presenters
                     Sponsored by Author's Republic

10pm - midnight - Second Night Festival AFTER PARTY - Simpson House
                    Celebrating Audio Fiction -
                   Sponsored by Findaway Voices

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                                                  SATURDAY, June 9, 2018
 
9:00am - 10:30am  -- The "State of the Independents" Podcasters Roundtable and Panel
             What is happening in the world of audio fiction for independent producers!! Hosted by Brian Price.
 
10am - 5pm -- Workshop 101 CREATING THE DRAMATIC PODCAST continues. Click here for Workshop 101 details.

10am - 5pm -- Workshop 102 CONNECTING CREATORS WITH AUDIENCE continues. Click here for Workshop 102 details.
                         Note: There will be a special 'pitch' session at 4pm for this program. All welcome as space allows.

11:00am - 12:15pm -- A Story Well Told: Celebrating The Human Voice at Kansas City Public Library's Park Plaza Truman Auditorium.
                 Scott Brick, Julia Whelan, Tavia Gilbert and others with host Geof Prysirr.

1:00pm - 2:30pm -- National World War I Museum & Memorial - Blood Cotton
                   Workshop performance of new public radio series: Blood Cotton written by Howard Craft and directed by Dion Graham
                  NOTE: A bus will take guests from the library and hotel to the Museum and back

5:15pm - 6:00pm -- Celebrating Mark Twain at Prospero's Books
                
7:15 - 8:15pm -- ShakesRumble at Bragg Auditorium

8:15-10:00pm AUDIO Tonight! at Bragg Auditorium (in All Soul's)

10pm - midnight - Third Night Festival DANCE & AFTER PARTY - Bragg Hall
                    Celebrating ALL HEAR Now Festival Artists -
                 

                                                   SUNDAY, June 10, 2018
 
9:00am - 11:30am  -- Closing Brunch and Festival Awards
            HEAR Now Festival Favorite (from NATF Playhouse) and Corwin Awards presented.

            Fly home after 2pm from Kansas City Airport to ensure you can enjoy the closing Brunch and make it to the airport in time!!

2018 HEAR Now Festival Featured Programming:

 Poster design by Jim Arndt of IDDP (www.iddp.com)

  ShakesRumble

    More than 400 years after they were first quilled, the plays and poems of
William Shakespeare are part of the
fabric of our literary and performance culture,
ranging from movies to plays to
coffee mugs to memes.

This is all the more of a phenomenon considering that originally, the only way to witness these stories was in person,
being directly addressed by the original company themselves.

As part of the HEAR Now Festival's continuing celebration and exploration of
how the spoken words of William Shakespeare reach us, through means both classic and modern, we are getting back to that
Direct Address...and then, to paraphrase a bit, we shalt prepare to Rumble...!
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was presented
Saturday, June 9th, 7:16pm - 8:16pm, in the Bragg Auditorium Lobby
at All Soul's Unitarian Universalist Church

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Julia Whelan vs Scott Brick

PJ Ochlan vs Delaney Cinnamon

PJ Ochlan vs Julia Whelan

PJ Ochlan vs Julia Whelan - Round 2

Winner PJ Ochlan accepts The Bardy

ShakesRumble Featured...

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Neil Hellegers (Director & Ring Master)

     Neil is a narrator, actor, and educator who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has narrated numerous audiobooks, with a focus in speculative fiction and non-, as well as lent voice to various video games and commercials. Recent on-camera work includes roles on CBS's Madam Secretary, Netflix's House of Cards, and NBC's Law & Order: SVU. Neil has performed Shakespeare nationally and internationally, and has directed and taught said Bard to actors of all ages. He has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania in theater arts and psychology, and a MFA in acting from Trinity Rep Conservatory.

Neil Hellegers

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Scott Brick

Scott Brick (Golden Voice)

Scott Brick has recorded bestsellers and Pulitzer-Prize winners in every conceivable category, over 850 titles, including JURASSIC PARK, PATRIOT GAMES, IN COLD BLOOD and HELTER SKELTER, since his debut in 1999. A Grammy nominee, Scott has won over 50 Earphones Awards, five Audie Awards, and has twice been named Publishers Weekly’s Narrator of the Year. After AudioFile Magazine proclaimed him a Golden Voice, his work was thereafter profiled in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES and ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.
     In 2015 Scott began teaching the nation’s first fully-accredited university course devoted solely to audiobook narration at UCLA, and in 2017 Scott became an inaugural member of Audible’s Hall of Fame.

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Tavia Gilbert

Winner of the 2017 Best Female Narrator Audie Award, Tavia is a producer, writer, and acclaimed narrator of more than 500 full-cast and multi-voice audiobooks for virtually every publisher in the industry. She is a nine-time Audie nominee, three-time nominee and one-time winner of Voice Arts Awards, and the recipient of seventeen Earphones Awards, a ListenUp Award, and three Parent's Choice Awards.

Tavia is a trusted and sought-after actress for work across every genre, from children's and YA, to literary fiction, non-fiction, and genre fiction. Audible named her a Genre-Defining Narrator: Master of Memoir, and Library Journal has written of this highly-acclaimed actress that she is "as close as you can get to a full cast narration with a solo voice."

Tavia Gilbert

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Robin Miles (Golden Voice)

       Known for great accents and emotional nuance, narrator Robin Miles brings words to life. A veteran of Broadway, classical plays, TV/film, and museum exhibitions, with 300+ Audiobook titles, she is the 2014 ALA Voice of Choice, an Audiofile Magazine Golden Voice and Grammy finalist (directing), with multiple awards (Audies, Best of the Year), Earphones). She was asstistant professor of Speech, teaching Shakespeare and Greek theater at SUNY Purchase Theater Conservatory, and has taught workshops and seminars at UC San Diego, U of MN (Duluth), Yale Drama School, and Denver Center Theater School.
     Robin owns Voxpertise® training & production studio. She graduated from Yale University and the Yale School of Drama.

Golden Voice Robin Miles

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PJ Ochlan

PJ Ochlan

An Audie Award winner, multiple Earphones Award winner, and Voice Arts Award nominee, P.J. Ochlan's work behind the microphone began in 1987 as a young voice actor with many commercials and promos. Since then he has lent his diverse talents to virtually every voiceover genre. Most notably, he is a widely acclaimed and record-setting audiobook narrator with hundreds of fiction and non-fiction titles to his credit.

P.J.'s voice work is enhanced by his mastery of accents, distinctive characters and versatility, as well as his proficiency with English, French, Italian, German and Mandarin. He is also the founder of Dr. Dialect and co-founder of the Deyan Institute of Voice Artistry.

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Julia Whelan

Julia has appeared in many films and television series, including ABC’s Once And Again.
    
After receiving a degree in English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College and Oxford University, Julia began narrating audiobooks. She has since recorded hundreds of novels and been awarded Earphone and Audie Awards, and been named one of Audiofile Magazine’s Best Voices and Audible's Narrator of the Year.

Julia Whelan

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Additional "Rumblers" Include:

Delaney Cinnamon

Delaney Cinnamon

Delaney took to the stage for the first time in kindergarten and has never looked back. She has appeared in dozens of theatrical performances, excelling in character roles where she can become immersed in a particular persona and adopt the accents, mannerisms and speech patterns to bring that character to life.  Local community theater credits include Our Town, Little Mermaid, Meet Me in St. Louis and Gypsy at Clear Space Theatre in Rehoboth Beach, DE; White Christmas, Twelfth Night, Bye Bye Birdie, and Much Ado About Nothing with the Possum Point Players in Georgetown, DE and the Wizard of Oz at the Riverfront Theater in Milford, DE.

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Samantha Desz

I grew up in Cleveland, OH but have called New York City my home for nearly 20 years. I recently relocated to Kansas City, MO and now split my time between KCMO and NYC.
I studied acting and pre-med in university (yes, you can do that) and despite the good grades and everything else, I decided to scrap medical school for a life in the arts. I dove in and never looked back! I studied in an acting conservatory in London, England, was a proud member of the Acting Apprentice Company at Actors Theatre of Louisville, made a few other pit stops along the way, and finally landed in NYC. I quickly fell into the arts community, pursued an acting career, founded a theatre company (which I ran for 10 years), and worked for a corporate production company (whew!).
I found Voice Acting pretty early on but didn't transition into pursuing it full time right away. As I worked more and more as a Producer, I realized Voice Acting fit me like a glove, both creatively and professionally. It became, and still is, the perfect symbiotic artistic relationship – I get to tell stories and create characters AND I get to make things happen!

Samantha Desz

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Donna Postal

Donna Postal

Donna is a full-time voice actress who is passionate about audiobooks. She has recorded more than two hundred hours of stories in a variety of genres. She is fascinated by all kinds of stories and loves telling them. From memoir and biography to literary fiction, romance, mystery, and suspense, Donna uses her innate curiosity, talent, and decades of experience on stage and in the recording studio to bring books to life.

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