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2017 HEAR Now Festival Featured Programming:

Closing Brunch & Festivals Awards Ceremony
Sunday, June 11th, 9:00am - 11:30am, Holiday Inn Grand Ballroom.

Purchase an ALL ACCESS FESTIVAL PASS, to attend any of our events, or select individual tickets to specific events you want to attend:
Individual Event Ticket Costs:

$15.00 for Closing Brunch & Awards Ceremony

ADDRESSES FOR OUR VENUES:
Each event below lists the location and address.
CLICK HERE FOR THE 2017 HEAR
MAP FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF LOCATIONS AND ADDRESSES.


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Featuring the
2017 Norman Corwin Award for Excellence in Audio Theatre

presented to
Brian Price & Jerry Stearns

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Jerry Stearns
PictureBrian Price
JERRY STEARNS & BRIAN PRICE

The founders and moving spirits behind the Great Northern Audio Theatre have been chosen to receive the 2017 Norman Corwin Award for Excellence in Audio Theatre. Based in the Midwest, Great Northern Audio Theatre creates its own unique brand of lighthearted, whimsical, and comic original stories that evoke the inventiveness of Firesign Theatre and the sophistication of golden-age radio producer, Norman Corwin. Working with Minnesota's premier Sci-Fi convention, Minicon (later moved to CONvergence), Jerry and Brian created live shows each year to the delight of con-goers, embracing – and extending, and often satirizing – the Science Fiction genre. Their motto says it all:
                                                                     “Ours is not to create the machines of the future.
                                                                Ours is to make fun of them when they break down.”

 
They have also created many excellent studio productions, and their work is not always comic. It can be pointed, ingenious, and dramatic, crossing genres and offering new viewpoints on modern life. To give just a few examples, Tumbleweed Roundup turned a Western story on its head with a wild cowboys-and-aliens encounter; Drummer's Dome explored generational realities and perceptions; Solid State University took a look at education as it was, is, and might become (winning the Golden Reel Award from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters); Dialog With Martian Trombone ingeniously revealed the real extra-terrestrial invasion that was covered up by Orson Welles' famous broadcast; and In The Embers – a truly classic original story of music, memory, and time and was mastered at the legendary ZBS studios – has been nominated for an Audie Award.
 
Jerry Stearns is a native Minnesotan, firmly settled in Minneapolis, where he is a longtime volunteer broadcaster and trainer at KFAI-FM. Starting in 1979 he co-hosted Shockwave, a Sci-Fi oriented show, and began creating original sketches at Minicon. In 1994 he began his current weekly show, Sound Affects—A Radio Playground, and in 1996 helped found the Mark Time Award and the Ogle Award, presented annually at CONvergence. Like his co-creator Brian, Jerry was involved very early with the Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop, and has had original scripts produced at Workshop shows.  They have also organized audio theater workshops and conferences of their own.
 
Brian Price is more peripatetic, born in the Washington, DC area and having lived in Missouri, Iowa, and South Dakota before settling with his family in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was associated for many years with KOPN-FM in Columbia, Missouri, serving as a staff member for the Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop and producing their series of TAP technical-assistance tapes. Interested in both history and the arts, Brian served as President of the Arts Council in Brookings, South Dakota, for a number of years, and produced the Dakota Reader Audio Arts Series for the South Dakota State Museum of Art. Brian has worked with audio theatre troupes from Massachusetts to Alaska.
 
The Norman Corwin Award for Excellence in Audio Theatre, given annually by The National Audio Theatre Festivals (NATF), is the premier American recognition of lifetime achievement, regardless of media, in the field of audio theatre. It was instituted May 3, 2010, on Norman Corwin's 100th birthday. The first Award was given to Mr. Corwin himself, who is considered the Grand Master of American radio theatre.
 
The Corwin Award is announced each year on May 3rd by NATF and presented annually  at HEAR Now's Closing Ceremonies, in Kansas City, this year scheduled for Sunday, June 11th, at the Holiday Inn Country Club Plaza Ballroom. Legacy Awards are given occasionally, to honor great American contributors to the audio theatre art who have passed on.

Since 2010, NATF's Corwin Award recipients have included Tom Lopez, Peggy Webber, Yuri Rasovsky, The Firesign Theatre (Philip Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman, Philip Proctor),  Erik Bauersfeld, and Judith Walcutt, with Legacy Awards to Himan Brown, Orson Welles and this year, Stan Freberg.

Click here to read more about the The Norman Corwin Award for Excellence in Audio Theatre.

Picture2017 HEAR Now Festival Awards
Festival Awards

      Who won this year's Audience Favorite from the programs presented by the NATF Playhouse?
 

 



MARK TIME AWARD-WINNERS 2017

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 On the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of The Firesign Theatre. the surviving members, David Ossman and Phil Proctor have decided, as part of Firesign’s Legacy Project, to award this year’s 20th Annual Mark Time Awards, to Dear Friends who have been invaluable to the group throughout their history.
 
The Mark Time Awards were originally established to honor the best audio theatre productions in the Science Fiction genre. It was named for the character “Mark Time,” created and played by David Ossman, adjunct to his work with The Firesign Theatre, the recorded-comedy group who were Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman, and Phil Proctor.  Together, they produced over 25 albums and performed live in venues as varied as Carnegie Hall, the Seattle Pier, the Ash Grove, the Roxy, the Wiltern, the Beacon, the Paramount, and even Your Father’s Mustache—in the course of their forty-five year career together, on and off the road.
 
In subsequent years since the awards’ 1996 inception at Minicon 31, with MTA co-founders Brian Price and Jerry Stearns of Great Northern Audio at the helm, the award categories expanded to include the genres of horror and fantasy, as the Ogle Awards, named for Charles Ogle, the actor who played Frankenstein’s monster in the first film version of the book.

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In 2015, the MTA’s moved to the HEAR Now Festival in Kansas City, Missouri with a new focus on the educational legacy and artistic influence of the Firesign Theatre on the audio medium and again expanded recognition categories to include the mystery and detective forms, as well as next-generation producers and unique contributions to the field. The awards are named for well-known Firesign characters or other significant influences in the audio theatre medium. 
 
The Danger is given to the best new work in the detective/mystery genre and is named for Phil Austin’s signature character, Nick Danger.

The Bradshaw, created in memory of Peter Bergman’s Police Lieutenant Bradshaw, is given for service to the audio arts medium.

The Betty Jo is named for Phil Proctor’s Betty Jo Bialosky aka Nancy character, for Best Performance.

The Runyon is named to honor radio’s original poet laureate Norman Corwin whose character Runyon, in his 1941 radio play, The Odyssey of Runyon Jones, inspired generations of sound dramatists, writers, and artists—including The Firesign Theatre.

Next year’s awards for 2018 will include a new category for audio comedy and all previous categories will be open for competition, beginning on January 1st, 2018 and closing March 1st, 2018. 

Visit www.marktimeawards.org for more information and entry guidelines. Awards will be announced and presented at the 2018 HEAR Now Festival, in Kansas City, MO.
 
The Mark Time Awards are a co-production of The Firesign Theatre Legacy Project and Otherworld Media, a non-profit educational media company www.otherworldmedia.com.


Workshop 101 - Final Podcast - LIVE
Have you been following the Workshop 101 podcasts throughout the Festival?
This is your chance find out what they have been producing in their classes at Simpson House!!
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California Artists Radio Theatre
presents
75th Anniversary Production of 
We Hold These Truths

As part of the closing festivities HEAR Now will present a 20 minute sample of this new production.
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California Artists Theatre presents the 75th Anniversary of Norman Corwin''s broadcast of: We Hold These Truths, in celebration of the 225th Anniversary of the Bill of Rights for the Constitution of the United States of America.

Accompanying the Corwin play is the original music score created by Bernard Herrmann, transcribed by Christopher Husted for CART and for The LosAngeles Lawyer's Philharmonic which played the music live for the drama. The stars featured were Samantha Eggar, Charles Shaughnessy, Monte Markham, Shelley Long, Norman Lloyd, Phil Proctor, Leonard Maltin, Rene Auberjonois, Richard Herd, James Lancaster, Alice Maltin, Tom Williams, Susan Fallendar. Melinda Peterson, Herb Ellis, Joe Flood, John O'Callaghan, Paul Keith HM Wynant and John Harlan. The program was recorded by Jeff Sheridan's Sound Works, Jason Sharrow, first editor, and the Philharmonic was recorded by Chuck Able Sound Systems with Ken Stange Music Producer and Gary Greene Conductor-Founder of the Los Angeles Lawyers Symphony. Peggy Webber Produced and directed  the production by permission of Norman Corwin's daughter, Diane Corwin Okarski and the Estate of Norman Corwin.

This new production was broadcast as a special on Sirius XM on the 15th Day of December 2016. THE CHAMPIONS OF JUSTICE PROGRAM ASKED TO REBROADCAST THE CART PRODUCTION OVER ABC AND SALEM NETWORKS, in JANUARY of 2017.
The California Artists Radio Theatre (CART) has been presenting award-winning stage productions, as well as the best in classic and modern audio drama, for more than 50 years. The CART company is a Who's Who of the most respected actors from the National Theatres of Great Britain and Ireland, and the best of American Broadway theatre, film, and television. CART was founded by veteran actress, director and producer, Peggy Webber, who has performed in more than 8,000 network radio shows, 300 television programs, 100 stage plays and 21 feature films. CART performances have been heard on XM Radio, Oasis Recording, and Audible programs and have been broadcast over NPR, Pacifica, American Public Radio and on local public radio stations.
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HEAR Now: The Audio Fiction and Arts Festival  |  ​June 24 - 27, 2021  |  Website by  J2 Design NYC
  • Home
  • About
    • About
    • Guest Artists
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    • Hotel
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  • Closing Brunch and Corwin Awards 2020
  • PODCAST PALOOZA
    • Podcast Palooza 2020
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  • Contact
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