Public Works: "On Fire"

Tamara Kissane, the playwright and Artist Soapbox podcast host, is well-acquainted with the constraints that film and live theater place around the works their artists can make. But if those mediums make it cost-prohibitive to locate a story in an underwater submarine or on top of a mountain, Kissane— who has recently branched out into audio drama—says that “in audio drama, you can do both in the same story.” Public Works, her new series co-produced by Mettlesome, gives regional writers a lab and a forum in which to do the same. In this first edition, local theatricals Dustin Britt, Elisabeth Lewis Corley, Sylvia Freeman, Chuck Keith, and Katy Koop develop three-to-five-minute stories based on a prompt (this week: “fire”) that are designed to be heard, not read. Your job? Show up, chill with your beverage of preference, close your eyes, and listen. “There’s a freedom with this artform,” Kissane notes. “We can take our listeners anywhere and still maintain the incredible intimacy when a human voice is just beyond your ears.” —Byron Woods