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Alfred Man Featured on Front Page of Wall Street Journal

March 10, 2010 - ALFRED -- As a media studies major at the University of Southern Maine, Fred Greenhalgh was just trying to come up with a senior project – not find a way onto the front page of the Wall Street Journal.


But last month, four years after recording his first audio play, that’s exactly where he was.


“I almost dropped it at Hannaford in Saco,” Greenhalgh, 26, said about first seeing the article in print.


The story, by reporter Barry Newman, followed Greenhalgh – a resident of Alfred – as he directed scenes for his adaptation of “Open Season,” a book by Archer Mayor, into an audio drama.


With actors from South Portland-based Mad Horse Theater, Greenhalgh recorded the sounds of them walking through snow and slamming doors, along with their dialogue. Later, he got on his laptop, put all the sounds together, added music and had a 28-minute play that was ready for radio. It was the 14th audio drama Greenhalgh’s created since his senior year in 2006.


It’s a fun and different artistic avenue for the actors, too.


Christine Marshall, a Mad Horse actor who’s lent her talents to Greenhalgh’s productions, said it’s nice for the actors to have their scripts right in front of them – meaning there’s very little rehearsal involved. It’s also more fun than recording audiobooks, which Marshall has done.


“It’s much more theatrical,” she said. “It’s a very dynamic format.”


In addition, it gives Mad Horse a chance to collaborate with another artist in the same community, and Greenhalgh is great to work with, she said.


“He’s got a great deal of energy and a lot of integrity,” said Marshall.


Greenhalgh lives off the grid in Alfred a one-room, heavily insulated, octagon-shaped house that he and his girlfriend built in 2007. Situated in the woods on Deer Run Road, their land is also home to chickens, ducks, goats and their14-year-old dog Wattson.


Greenhalgh wasn’t always a theater guy. He started out as a short story writer, but thought he’d have a better chance of getting his work out into the world through a different sort of medium. That’s when he turned to audio plays.


“I’m sort of a hybrid between people who want to be a writer and people who want to make their own movie,” he said.


Though Greenhalgh mostly likes to make audio plays based on stories he’s written, he doesn’t mind occasionally recreating an old radio drama or turning someone else’s written words into sound. His dream is to adapt all of Stephen King’s works into audio plays.


But the plays he made would probably have to start paying Greenhalgh’s bills before he could dedicate that much time to them.


Though one of the advantages of producing radio dramas is their relatively low cost, Greenhalgh, who said budgets average around $1,500, almost always pays for the plays out of his own pocket.


“I don’t go to the movies. I pay for audio dramas,” he said.


Eventually, he hopes there are enough people willing to download the pieces for a fee that they will start to pay for themselves.


Greenhalgh said there are “two camps” of radio drama fans – the people who loved listening to the audio plays back in their heyday and the younger folks looking for something new to listen to on their iPods.


Radio dramas were most popular in the first half of the 20th century, before television took over.


However, Greenhalgh said, he’s not the only game in town these days. As a disc jockey at WMPG, Greenhalgh plays audio dramas on the radio station once a week, from 1-1:30 p.m. on Thursdays, and says he gets more submissions than he can air. They come from Boston, Tennessee and Portland, Ore.


“There are groups all over the place,” he said.


A Web designer by day, Greenhalgh admits it could be the fact that he knew how to make the site for his production company search-friendly that gave him the edge for the Wall Street Journal feature. Regardless, it led 100 new people to sign up for his e-mail list.


Though Greenhalgh was thrilled with the exposure from the Wall Street Journal article, he hopes it’s not the highlight of his career. Beyond his dream to adapt King’s work, he’d like to start a program at his alma mater to teach the art of audio drama.


“I would like to see this medium revive and thrive,” he said.


A couple Saturdays ago, Greenhalgh and the Mad Horse actors held a bean supper at the theater company’s headquarters, the former Hutchins School in South Portland. The reactions from the more than 40 audience members gave Greenhalgh hope that, with similar events, his pieces will be able to generate interest in a new generation.


“All the food was gone and we got a really good response to the content,” he said.

by Leslie Bridgers, March 10, 2010, The Reporter

Lakes: Shaker Pond
Regions: Sanford


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