Saturday, April 26, 2014

BE ADAPTABLE

In the spring of 2013, Susan McClelland was driving down Main Street in Zionsville, listening to WITT 91.9 FM Zionsville radio.  Just as she came to the 'T' at Ash Street, she wished there was more radio drama to listen to.

And then it hit her:  she could make some herself.  

She called me with her idea and I considered it for quite a long...okay, for about a millisecond.  

YES.  

What a great idea!  

And so we started a radio drama project: Zionsville Radio Players.

We began by adapting classic literature into radio scripts.  Boy, did we adapt.  We wrote, re-wrote, adapted, adapted, adapted.

Susan suggested that our motto should be: BE ADAPTABLE.

How prescient!  

Turns out, adaptation has been the primary activity in our little project.  There just aren't any templates out there for what we are doing.  We're flying by the seat of our pants.  

We're making it up as we go along.  


We've had to re-schedule, re-work, re-write, re-record.  


We've had to back down, back off, back up (as in, return to a previously-visited spot), back up (as in, save our work on flash drive!), back each other.  


We've had to learn how to adapt non-dramatic material to our medium, adapt our acting styles, adapt our directing styles, adapt our schedules.  


And adapt our schedules when we've lost recordings to server crashes.

We've bitten off more than we can chew, we've scheduled more than we could do, we've added and subtracted.   


It's been quite a year, and we've learned a lot.  And there's plenty more to be learned.  


But if there's one thing we've learned it's...BE ADAPTABLE.

Good thinkin', Susan.