Innovations

2017 HEAR Now Festival Featured Programming:

INNOVATIONS
In Story-telling

In Conjunction with the
Kansas City Public Library
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Thursday, June 8th, 7:00pm - 8:30pm, in the Truman Forum at the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library

Photos by Jessica Albina and Scott Cinnamon

William Dufris

HOST: William Dufris (Pocket Universe Productions)

William Dufris is producer/director of AudioComics and Pocket Universe Productions. He recently produced The Starling Project by Jeffrey Deaver (w/Alfred Molina) and Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (w/Tatiana Maslany, Haley Joel Osment, Kate Mulgrew and Stephen King) for Audible Studios... winning an Audie Award for each.
William is also an award winning audiobook narrator and the voice of BOB in the original animated series of BOB The Builder.

Angela Elam

Host: Angela Elam (New Letters On The Air)

Angela Elam, producer/host of UMKC's literary radio show New Letters on the Air has worked in public radio since 1988, but she got her start as a reader for Radio Deutsche Welle in Cologne, Germany in 1981.
Elam received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Georgia in dramatic writing. Immediately upon graduation, she was seduced into public radio at WUGA-FM in Athens, Georgia where she produced literary programs and later served as host and technical producer of the Public Radio News Directors (PRNDI) award-winning local magazine show, Centerlines. She has also produced radio dramas and special features, including some freelance stories for NPR, one of which "Train Whistles or Horns?" won the PRNDI Award for best used of sound in 1994.
She has served as producer and host of New Letters on the Air since 1996, and enjoys using her playwriting skills to shape the dialogue within her interviews.

A Conversation With Gareth Fry

Gareth Fry

     The HEAR Now Festival's Opening Panel INNOVATIONS will include Gareth Fry, winner of a 2017 Special Tony Award for his design of Broadway's The Encounter.
     Gareth is an award winning sound designer best known for creating work for leading UK theatre directors such as John Tiffany, Complicite's Simon McBurney, Sacha Wares and Katie Mitchell. He has also designed a number of events and exhibitions, from the V&A's landmark David Bowie Is exhibition, to being asked by Danny Boyle to design the sound effects for the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games.
Gareth, who joins HEAR Now from the set of his new NYC show, won an Evening Standard Award for The Encounter and has received three Olivier Awards for best sound design, for the shows Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, Black Watch and Waves. He has also received a Helpmann Award for Black Watch and an IRNE award for Wild Swans.
     A specialist in the use of binaural sound, having been involved in a number of theatre productions, Virtual Reality projects, exhibitions and advertising campaigns, Gareth shared some of his expertise in helping the HEAR Now Festival in presenting AUDIO Tonight's Binaural Shakespeare.
     Gareth's work includes 20+ productions at the Royal National Theatre, over a dozen at the Royal Court and countless more at venues such as the Donmar Warehouse, Old Vic, Young Vic and in the West End. He has worked extensively internationally, including New York, Berlin, Cologne and Dublin.
     INNOVATIONS runs 7:00pm - 8:30 at the Kansas City Park Plaza Library, right down the hill from the Holiday Inn Country Club Plaza. Entry with your HEAR Now Festival Badge.

The Declaration of Independence

INNOVATIONS, will include a performance of the U.S. Declaration of Independence inspired by the book Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality.

Directed by Audie winner Robin Miles, this performance features many of the Festival’s celebrity voice guests artists including Simon Jones (Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), Bob Kaliban (recently seen as Jason Priestly on Late Night), Dion Graham (Madame Secretary / The Wire), Julia Whelan (Once and Again), Scott Brick (mulit-Audie winner), and PJ Ochlan (Audie winner) the HEAR Now cast will ‘perform and present’ America’s founding text to showcase not only innovations in the use of language in crafting the Declaration, but also its continued relevance to contemporary social issues.

This performance will help to reveal what democracy actually means and what it asks of us as citizens of the US.

Featuring Peformances By:
Scott Brick          Delaney Cinnamon          Dion Graham
Bob Kaliban       Simon Jones       PJ Ochlan
Sande Sherr        Julia Whelan

Directed by Robin Miles