EZRA SPEAKS

My wife Susan and I moved (back, for Susan) to southern Vermont in June of 2021.  Later that summer I was visited, as it were, by a character I eventually named Ezra.  I woke up one night, reached for my iPhone, and recorded a short monologue about how dealing with bats in the house provided a lesson on why it was foolish to be vaccinated against Covid.  

 

That may have been the last recording I made in the middle of the night.  But in the weeks that followed I got into the routine of waking early, going downstairs to the TV room, and recording another monologue.  The topics for these monologues might have been brewing for a few days prior to recording.  I might even have occasionally jotted down a few notes.  But I tried to keep the work extemporaneous, and I always recorded early in the morning because I liked the vocal quality that resulted from the combination of my chronic sinus condition and a few hours sleep.

 

I recorded about a dozen monologues without knowing for sure how they might ultimately be presented.  I thought they might work as a live theatre piece --- and they might still --- but began to feel more comfortable with an earlier inclination to turn the monologues into a podcast series.  I re-recorded the monologues, based on transcripts of the original extemporaneous recordings, with a more sophisticated audio program that gave me the ability to edit, and to add ambience and music.  After a lot of editing and re-recording, I ended up with a podcast series containing 15 episodes. Here’s a link to Episode One – Summer.