NATF's 27th Annual Audio Theater Workshop in West Plains, MO to Feature Shakespeare & Cowboy Poetry

PRLog (Press Release) – Apr 25, 2008 – The National Audio Theatre Festivals, Inc. (NATF) will host their 27th Annual Audio Theater Workshop in West Plains, MO, June 22-27, 2008. This unique week of audio arts training and hands-on participation is dedicated to all areas of audio production. Beginners to experts of all ages are welcomed for a week of learning, networking, and sharing. Returning to West Plains for the seventh consecutive year, the 2008 workshop will feature Shakespeare and Cowboy Poetry.

Live audiences will enjoy the fruits of the participants' experiences during a special performance Friday, June 27, in the Civic Center Theater. This performance will also be broadcast, webcast, and recorded. Highlighting this summer's weeklong event will be participatory workshops in, among other areas, script writing, performing and voice, and the technical aspects of this art form.

Female Cowboy Poet, Author/Artist, and self confessed Hysterical Relic Buckshot Dot (aka Dee Strickland Johnson) will not only perform Cowboy Poetry but will also teach workshops covering the history of the form, writing, and performing. A native of Arizona, Buckshot grew up on the Navajo and Hualapai reservations, and at the Petrified Forest. In addition to teaching in small schools in tiny Ozark communities and some of the largest inner city high schools in Arizona, Buckshot Dot has been featured at Cowboy Poets Gatherings and concerts in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Texas. She has appeared in concerts in Alabama, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and British Columbia.

In addition to teaching and performing, Buckshot Dot has been named an Academy of Western Artists' Female Cowboy Poet of the year and a finalist for Video and Song of the Year. She has won the Will Rogers Medallion Award for both of her historical poetry books: Arizona Herstory: Tales from her Storied Past and Arizona Woman Weird Wild and Wonderful.

For more information about Buckshot Dot, visit her website at www.buckshotdot.com.

He is Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill, but everyone knows him as Brother Blue. He is called by many the worlds’ greatest storyteller. He says he wants his stories ”…to be bread for the mind, the imagination, the heart, the soul….” He says, “I speak my stories from the middle of the middle of me to the middle of the middle of you.” His repertoire includes original Brother Blue stories, traditional stories from western culture, folk tales and spiritual stories from Africa and Asia, and his renowned own one-man versions of Shakespeare’s plays.

In 2002, Brother Blue was the first recipient from LANES (League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling) of an award named for him, The Brother Blue Award, honoring extraordinary commitment and support of storytelling and storytellers. The National Storytelling Network presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for sustained and exemplary contributions to storytelling in America. He has also received the Zora Neale Hurston Award] from the National Association of Black Storytellers; a Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Peace Commission; and the Anne Bradstreet Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cambridge Center for Adult Education for contributions to the poetry community. In 1975 he was awarded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Local Programming Award, and a Special Citation for Outstanding Solo Performance on Public Radio (WGBH-Boston). By resolution of the city councils, Brother Blue also has the distinction of being official storyteller of two Massachusetts cities — Cambridge, and Boston.

For more information about Brother Blue, visit his website at www.brotherblue.com.

Joining NATF this year will also be Sam A. Mowry, the founder and Executive Director of the Willamette Radio Workshop, a Portland, Oregon based audio theater company. It has won six national awards including the Crystal Communicator and multiple Ogle Awards. Sam's work as a director and producer gives him an insight to working both sides of the glass. To this end, he will be conducting workshops in voice and character development as well as performing in the Friday night production.

An award-winning stage actor of such roles as Caliban in The Tempest, Richard in The Lion in Winter, and Pertruchio in Taming of the Shrew, Sam's audio expertise includes: Audio Books, Business Presentations and Corporate Videos, Character and Cartoon Voices, Educational Videos and e-Learning, Film Trailers, Narration and Documentaries, I-Podcasts, Radio and Television Commercials, and Telephone System Recordings.

Cynthia McGean, Willamette Radio Workshop's dramaturge and resident playwright, will also lead workshops during this year's event. Cynthia is an award-winning published writer, director, actress, social service veteran and educator. Her original script, Pandora's Box received the Grand Prize from the National Audio Theatre Festival's 2004-2005 Script Competition and her adaptation of Frankenstein was awarded a Special Gold Ogle Award for Best Adaptation]. Cynthia leads the Writers-On-the-Air Workshop, offered through Willamette Radio Workshop. She has just finished her first novel and she has written scripts for traditional stage productions, readers' theater, puppetry, and audio theater. She is proud to be teaching third grade at Lot Whitcomb Elementary School in Milwaukie, Oregon.

For more information about Sam and Cynthia, visit their website at www.radiowork.com.

In addition to NATF's new guests, many favorite personalities will be returning to the festival to conduct workshops, share information, and work on the various productions. Returnees include Dwight Frizzell, music; NPR's Renee Pringle, Technical Director; Janine Marr, Executive Producer; and Ellen Stewart, who will direct the production of NATF's Script Competition Winner.

They encourage you to visit NATF's website (http://www.natf.org/atw.html) regularly. It will be updated as events and workshops are added and solidified.

The 2008 NATF Audio Theater Workshop is made possible, in part, by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; and the National Endowment for the Arts.