Friday, August 28, 2009

Here’s How We “Role”, Yo

Hi.

I’m pleased to report that, shortly after last week’s entry here, Prometheus' grand poobah, Steve Wilson, emailed me his casting picks for the next season of SuperHuman Times. Nobody’s been officially asked if they'll do it yet, but no one’s turned him down, so that’s a good sign. Right?

“Excited” doesn’t begin to describe how I felt when I read his choices. Over the years, I have considered my scripts to be a foundation upon which the directors and casts put up the walls and décor with their suggestions and performances. (One cast completely reworked the ending of one of my plays and it was much better as a result.) I’ve found this to be much healthier than getting all artsy and possessive about the damn stories. Anyway, assuming everyone wants to play this season, it should be a lot of fun. Some folks who usually assay supporting roles in shows like The Arbiter Chronicles will get a shot at leads, and we’ll have some Prometheus actors who have never done Times before. I hope they’ll have fun recording it, and I hope you’ll find their work fun to hear.

This season should be especially challenging for the actors because I went out of my way to write scripts that don’t necessarily take place in America or have American characters. One script, “No Good Deed”, is set in England and has all English and German characters. Another, “Flight Risk”, has a central character in Arizona who’s a transplanted Iranian. How come? The Times Universe (Microverse?) was just getting kind of homogenous (Nataliya Tzone’s Roma heritage aside) and I wanted to tell stories of people with different backgrounds. I’m sure the actors will just love me for that when they try to deliver the required accents to Steve’s satisfaction. (He’s directing again, thank God.)

And I have been drafted for a supporting role in one of the stories, “Print the Legend” -- the two-parter based on “The Hot Property”, the graphic novel script that started me down this lonely road. I won’t say anymore about my part right now, but if you recall Paul Frees’s voice for The Thing in the old Fantastic Four cartoons, that’s the kind of voice I’ll be going for. (You’ll guess who I’m playing if you read the GN script, I guarantee it.)

And while all that’s going on, I’m renovating the Times website. Again. I’ll probably wait until next week to relaunch it so I have something to write about here. Til then, thanks for listening, and reading.

-- L.

PS: While you’re waiting for Times, be sure to stop by the Prometheus site and listen to Steve Wilson’s readings of his fiction. His latest one, Peace Lord of the Red Planet, is underway now. To me, it has the flavor of the John Carter of Mars stories and a Twilight Zone episode called “Execution”, in that both have men getting plucked out of their time, as does this. But despite that similarity, this is clearly in Steve’s voice (written and audible) and, like his other works, is filled with fascinating characters and plenty of (sometimes political) ideas you may or may not agree with (to paraphrase from Frasier, “He’s a Libertarian; we’ve decided to find it charming”), but he expresses them in an entertaining way that even a bleeding heart liberal like me can enjoy the story.

Okay, Steve, there’s your unsolicited plug, now where’s my show?

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