Edgy OU Alum Ira Gammerman has written an awesome new article about the benefits of playwrights doing podcasts. He discusses his own podcast “Dangerously Unqualified” about his unfortunate love life with fellow OU alumni Ryan Dowler as well as the history of playwrights engaging in this medium.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
My first name is Ira, so I guess a career in podcasting was inevitable? When I moved to New York a few years back, I wanted to expand my skill set beyond writing plays. Podcasting seemed like a pretty intuitive transition: the format offers a great deal of creative freedom, production costs are relatively low, and—thanks to that other Ira—the medium is picking up major steam in popular culture.I started a serialized dating podcast called Dangerously Unqualified with EST/Youngblood alumni playwright Ryan Dowler and our friends at BSD Media.The premise was simple: Ryan agreed to fix my romantic troubles, if I gave him full control of my online dating profiles and wardrobe choices, followed all of his sage dating advice, and completed his whacky challenges. (Hilarity ensued; we even wound up in jail.)Not only did Dangerously Unqualified massively improve my dating life, but it also gave Ryan and me a chance to experiment with long-form serialized storytelling and collaborative content generation in a low-stakes environment that was protected from industry pressures. We dictated our own process, wrote all of the material ourselves, had final cut on the episodes, worked at our own pace, and learned a whole lot.
Click here for the full article. Congrats Ira on this article about playwrights expanding opportunities beyond the stage!
More about Ira
Ira Gamerman is an Award-Winning AustraliAmerican PodcastPlaywright. He creates sound and songs using affected electric mandolin and guitar with Anonymous In The Clouds, Battler, and Pronouns. His Dramatic work has been produced by The Kennedy Center, Collaboraction, Short & Sweet Sydney, Source Festival, and The Chicago New Media Summit. In 2006, City Paper voted Ira “Best Playwright Of Baltimore” and in 2009, he was nominated for a New York Innovative Theater Award for best short play. As a Podcaster, Ira writes for Radiotopia’s THE TRUTH (featured on This American Life) where his Collaborative Audio-Play “Biological Clock” won a 2013 Mark Time Award from the Fire Sign Theater for Best Science Fiction Audio Production of the Year. He also co-created and co-hosts DANGEROUSLY UNQUALIFIED: A PODCAST ABOUT LOVE with EST/Youngblood Alumni Playwright Ryan Dowler through BSD MEDIA. Internationally, Ira is Co-Creative Artistic Director of AUSTRALIAMERICAN THEATER CONGLOMORATE: EVERYTHING IS EVERYWHERE (2 Americans 2 Aussies 2 Gals 2 Dudes 2 Goys 2 Jews 2 Legit 2 Quit) with Jessica Bellamy, David Finnigan, and Siobhan O’loughlin. Ira holds a BA in Theater from Towson University, an MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University, and studied Devised theater at the (now defunct) Dartington College Of Art in the UK. As an educator, Ira has taught undergraduate theater at Ohio University and Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn in addition to playwright-mentoring Young Playwrights Festivals at Atlanta’s Horizon Theater and Baltimore’s Center Stage. As a journalist, Ira has been published by Consequence Of Sound, Eleven Magazine in St. Louis (even though he has never actually visited St. Louis), and HowlRound. He was also an extra in Season 3 of The Wire and has the screenshot to prove it if you don’t believe him.
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