I just saw a podcast, Downstage Center advertised on ArtsJournal:

Downstage Center, a collaboration of the American Theatre Wing and XM Satellite Radio, is a weekly theatrical interview program that spotlights the creative talents on Broadway, Off-Broadway, across the country and around the world, with in-depth conversations that simply can’t be found anywhere else.

I think it’s cool, and it reminds me of the conversation I had with Eric L. in Los Angeles about how easy and pleasant it is to podcast. His show, EXTRUDING AMERICA, which he tapes with a long-distance actor friend over the phone, has been successful in getting a large number of downloads, and he’s building an audience for his comedy writing.

When I was at Stanford, I used to want to have a radio drama show, which would be, in effect, an ongoing production meeting of the type I used to have to go to weekly at OSF and Denver. It would have a cast of onerous and sniping characters – producers, directors, overwrought stage managers – talking to each other about the disastrous state of their theatre. Slings and Arrows, I guess. It could be called THE PRODUCTION MEETING, or THE COMPANY MEETING, or something. Everyone would have an absurd name like the list of contributors at the end of Car Talk. (“Heywoudja Buzzoff,” for example.) Maybe we could tape it live – broadcast it live – and podcast it later.

I need to write a post about the many semi-projects I am thinking about launching in Chicago – this is one of them, but there are a lot of others. They are all designed to be high-impact but low-committment, none of them requiring a full process. That seems to be my interest right now.