Willamette Radio Workshop Joins NATF's Audio Theater Workshop

PRLog (Press Release) – May 12, 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.

Joining NATF this year will 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 Petruccio 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.http://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.

Visit NATF's website regularly (www.natf.org). as it will be updated as events and workshops are added and detailed.

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.