Project Title: Three hour-long audio compositions
Recipient Organization: Bay Area Radio Drama
Lead Artist: Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Genre and Date Awarded: Literary Arts, June 2004
To be Completed: April 2006

San Francisco’s first poet laureate, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, will collaborate with Bay Area Radio Drama and Earwax Productions to produce a series of three original hour-long audio compositions. In these programs, Ferlinghetti will juxtapose autobiography, commentary, and poetry in a highly personal acoustic exploration of “the sounds of American consciousness today.” The pieces will be broadcast on public radio nationally and internationally, and available through the Internet.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti has had long experience with the oral and audio medium. Beginning with public readings, poetry and jazz, drama performances, and radio presentations, in recent years he has worked several times with the project’s audio artists—Earwax Productions’ sound designer Jim McKee and Bay Area Radio Drama’s Director, Erik Bauersfeld. Their prior association has led to Ferlinghetti’s new interest in exploring the audio medium as a way of portraying his literary works and ideas through conversation, reading, and memories; as well as through the use of locations and brief dramatic sketches. Sound from three locations—the sea and waterfront, the canyons of Big Sur, and urban life in San Francisco—will serve as primary elements for each program. In particular, the series seeks to convey his vision of poetry as a force, with oral messages and imagery that can help liberate the American consciousness from the impact of commercialism in all the media.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is among the major literary figures of the second half of the 20th Century. One of the initial publishers of the Beat Generation poets, he also has published more than 30 books of his own works. Recently his City Lights Bookstore has officially been declared a Historical Landmark. His writing enjoys an international following.

Established in 1986 by Erik Bauersfeld, Bay Area Radio Drama’s (BARD’s) mission is to develop audio art works for radio, Internet, libraries, and other venues. The National Endowments for the Humanities and for the Arts have funded many Bay Area Radio Drama projects including an “Eugene O’Neill Radio Series,” seven plays under the direction of José Quintero, with sound design by Randy Thom, and an eighth directed by Edward Hastings. BARD also has produced original radio dramas by more than 30 Bay Area writers and theater artists including Sam Shepard, Susan Griffin, Ed Bullins, and Ellen Sebastian Chang. The productions have had national and international distribution.

Erik Bauersfeld has been producing, writing, and performing radio drama for over 40 years and will direct the Ferlinghetti programs.

The collaboration also will engage Bay Area sound designer Jim McKee, a two-time Peabody Award winner. His Earwax recording facility, founded in 1984, produces original sound design for all media, with projects ranging from Hollywood movies to interactive museum installations. Other collaborators will be drama critic, playwright, and producer Irene Oppenheim; musician and composer Wieslaw Pogorzelski, Artistic Director of Poet’s Theater; and Maria Gilardin, founder and director of TUC Radio.

LEAD ARTIST

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry countered the literary elite’s definition of art and the artist’s role in the world.

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919. Following his undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he saw service in the United States Navy in World War II as a ship’s commander. He received a Master’s degree from Columbia University in 1947 and a Doctorate from the University of Paris (Sorbonne) in 1950. From 1951 to 1953, settled in San Francisco, he taught French in an adult education program, painted, and wrote art criticism. In 1953, with Peter D. Martin, he founded City Lights Pocket Bookshop, the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country, and by 1955 he had launched the City Lights publishing house.

The bookstore has served for half a century as a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. City Lights Publishers began with the Pocket Poets Series, through which Ferlinghetti aimed to create an international, dissident ferment. His publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1956 led to his arrest on obscenity charges, and the trial that followed drew national attention to the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement writers. (He was overwhelmingly supported by prestigious literary and academic figures, and was acquitted.) This landmark First Amendment case established a legal precedent for the publication of controversial work with redeeming social importance.

Ferlinghetti’s paintings have been shown at various galleries around the world, from the Butler Museum of American Art to the Palace of Exhibitions in Rome. In San Francisco, his work can regularly be seen at the George Krevsky Gallery at 77 Geary Street.

Ferlinghetti was named San Francisco’s Poet Laureate in August 1998, and he used his post as a bully-pulpit from which he articulated the “voice of the people.” His San Francisco Chronicle columns, “Poetry as News” could be read on the City Lights Web site: www.citylights.com.

His Coney Island of the Mind (1958) has been translated into nine languages, and there are nearly 1,000,000 copies in print. His most recent books are A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997) and How to Paint Sunlight (2001), published by New Directions, New York. He also published two novels, HER (1960) and Love in the Days of Rage (1988). He has received many awards, including: the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Kirsch Award, the Bay Area Book Reviewers’ Association’s Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Award for Contribution to American Arts and Letters, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award, and several others in Italy. In 2003 he received the Authors’ Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and the Poetry Society of America’s Robert Frost Medal; and he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Letters.

OTHER COLLABORATING ARTISTS

Erik Bauersfeld

Professional Experience

• Director of Drama and Literature, Pacifica KPFA, Berkeley, California (1962-1991)
• Director of Special Projects, Pacifica KPFA, Berkeley, California (1991-2004)
• President and Director of Projects, Bay Area Radio Drama (1986-2004)

Recent Productions

• “Locations 1,” funded by the National Endowment for the Arts; “Locations 2,” funded by the Creative Work Fund. Two series of original works based on and recorded at specific acoustical Bay Area locations with writers Helen Cline, Ellen Sebastian, John O’Keefe, Ed Bullins, Millicent Dillon, Irene Oppenheim, Gary Soto, Millicent Dillon, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Randy Thom (Co-produced with WDR Köln.

Other Selected Productions

• The Eugene O’Neill Radio Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Executive director, Erik Bauersfeld. The plays were directed by José Quintero with commentaries by Travis Bogard and broadcast nationally by National Public Radio. Several were selected for international broadcast by the BBC London, WDR Köln, and Australian Radio. Included were O’Neill’s four one-act sea plays (S.S. Glencairn); Hughie (with its original cast, Jason Robards and Jack Dodson); The Emperor Jones (with Joe Morton), and The Hairy Ape (George Dzundza). Sound design was by Randy Thom. A final program, O’Neill’s Lazarus Laughed, the first full-length production of the play was directed by American Conservatory Theatre director Ed Hastings with sound design by Jim Mckee (Earwax Studios) and Barney Jones as Chorus Director. The music was written and directed by Lou Harrison. (1987-1995)
• Hörspiel/USA Project: in collaboration with WDR Klön, The Goethe Institute, and KPFA-FM Pacifica Radio, BARD produced seven modern radio dramas translated by Robert Goss, including: Houses, Jurgen Becker; Ophelia, Gerhard Ruhm (directed by Klaus Schöning); Centropolis, Walter Adler; The Other and I, Gunter Eich. Sound design for the plays by Jim Mckee. (1987-1991)
• BARD series, including The Horla, adapted by Guy de Maupassant story (sound by Jim Mckee); and Object Piece, Drury Pifer (sound by Randy Thom) (1992)
• “Art on Film Conference” (Metropolitan and Getty Museums) Moderated panel on sound in relation to art (1991)
• “PrixItalia,” represented National Public Radio, President of Radio Drama Jury, Perugia, Italy (1990)
• European Broadcasting Union, represented NPR at conference, Florence, Italy (1990, 1987)
• Sound Design Conference, In association with Randy Thom and Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound Studios presented a conference for 50 American radio producers (1989)
• “Mind’s Eye Theatre,” contributed to many productions, including a three hour version of Dracula by Bram Stoker (1988)
• Babbitt, 29 half-hour installments of Sinclair Lewis’s novel, performed by the Los Angeles Theatre Works for KCRW-FM in Santa Monica; editing and sound production with Jim Mckee, Earwax Productions (1987)
• “Tales from the Shadows,” in collaboration with Jim Mckee and Earwax Studios, adapted and produced a series of 13 bizarre classics by Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Poe, Lovecraft, Kafka, Bierce, and others for KCRW-FM in Santa Monica and others; distributed by NPR and Pacifica (1987)

Jim McKee

Profile

• Jim McKee is currently an active owner of Earwax Productions, Inc., located in San Francisco, which he co-founded in 1983. He received his Master of Fine Arts from The Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in Oakland, California, and his Bachelor of Music Education from Shenandoah Conservatory of Music in Virginia. In addition to his sound design work, he has lectured at YLE Radio in Helsinki, Finland, the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in South Africa, Western Public Radio, San Francisco State University, RTé Radio Ireland, UMCK, IATSE, CCAC, and The College for Recording Arts.

Experience

• As a sound designer, composer, engineer, and technical producer, McKee works primarily with computers, samplers, and tape, using concrete sound elements and human voice to build impressionistic and abstract sound environments. Works are generally designed in collaboration with film producers, playwrights, radio producers, performance artists, and product designers using multi-track recording, samplers, digital editing, computer synthesis, and a wide variety of studio processing techniques. His experience includes mixing, engineering, and sound design for nationally broadcast television and radio—commercial and drama; and research and production for interactive, multimedia, and DVD/CD-ROM. Radio credits include: “Locations,” for Bay Area Radio Drama, “Lost and Found Sound” for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” as well as feature programs for “Radio Atelier,” Finish Broadcasting, “New American Radio,” “Soundprint,” and Public Radio International. Film credits include: Cast Away, Final Fantasy, IMAX films; Whales and Yellowstone for Destination Cinema; special effects sound design for Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Secret Garden; and, most recently, design and mix for The Danube Exodus, The Rippling Currents of the River, a multi-screen interactive exhibit presented at the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles in collaboration with The Labyrinth Project at the University of Southern California.

Awards

• As a partner in Earwax Productions, Inc. since 1983, McKee enjoys, along with two other partners, the reputation of having been voted best sound design team in San Francisco. Earwax also has won honors from The Bay Area Critics Circle Awards, Northern California Broadcasters, and Association of Independents in Radio; as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Academy Award for Francis Ford Coppola’s production of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for which McKee contributed design concepts and sound effects along with the sound team of Columbia Pictures and American Zoetrope.

Clients

• Clients include: American Zoetrope, LucasFilm LTD, Pathe/MGM Entertainment, Cannon Films, National Public Radio, Bay Area Radio Drama, West German Radio, South Africa Broadcasting Corporation, The Kitchen Sisters, Finnish Broadcasting, Destination Cinema, Apple Computer, Inc., MTV, Colossal Pictures, Banana Republic, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Landor & Associates, Magic Theatre, Simon and Schuster, Clark Shoes, Royal Viking Lines, Visible Interactive, CAPS Software, Sacramento Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, Mondo Media, National Wildlife Federation, Meta Design, Sea Studios, and many others.

Maria Gilardin

RESUME HIGHLIGHTS

Professional Experience

• Founder and director of TUC Radio (Time of Useful Consciousness), an independent radio production and distribution organization (1992-present)
• Founding producer, “Making Contact,” a weekly public affairs program on 125 stations via satellite (1994)
• Independent producer of radio broadcasts, documentaries, and radio dramas. Active in recording of concerts, conferences, voice and sound effects, and studio productions of documentaries and plays (1980-present)
• Associate producer, Bay Area Radio Drama (1988-present)
• Adjunct faculty teaching classes in alternative media, Arts and Social Change Department, New College of California, (1988-90)
• Program Host, “Midnight becomes Electric,” KPFA Radio (1986-1992)
• Instructor, co-director of a multi-media play on the impact of automobiles, San Francisco State University (1987-88)

Recent Radio Productions

• Weekly half-hour radio program in distribution on the Pacifica KU Satellite to over 50 radio stations. Topics include: science, globalization, the World Trade Organization, the environment, and the arts. Mini-documentaries are produced on location on Indian reservations and in senior homes (1998-present)
• Radio Drama series, “Locations” with Bay Area Radio Drama, recorded live in African American churches, office buildings, supermarkets, at the local farmers’ market, on Baker Beach, and in the East Bay bus terminal. Prior to that, associate producer on the Hörspiel series, a co-production with WDR, Germany.

Irene Maupin Oppenheim

RESUME HIGHLIGHTS

Playwright, Journalist, Teacher

• This Daunting Task, consultant/writer, a video production with issues of reconciliation between Germans and Jews (2004)
• “Weights,” dramaturg, Mark Taper Forum New Works Festival, Los Angeles, California (2001)
• Adjunct Professor, Humanities/English, Los Angeles Trade-Technical College (1995-99)
• “Locations,” creative consultant to Bay Area Radio Drama for a series of four works for radio (1999)
• Other Voices Project, Playwright, Mentor, Market Taper Forum, Los Angeles, California (1997)
• Instructor/Producer, series of writing workshop performances featuring artists with disabilities, under a grant from the California Arts Council (1997)
• The Last Session, Producer, a musical written and performed by a songwriter with AIDS (1996)
• Threepenny Review, regular contributor to Berkeley-based literary magazine
• Firehouse Theater Company, Artistic Director, Los Angeles, California
• Member, Dramatists Guild

Playwriting/Producing

• An award-winning playwright. Stage dramas and plays for radio produced in Germany, New York, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, San Francisco, and Los Angeles

Periodical Publications

• Articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including, among others: The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Dance Magazine, American Theater Magazine, and The Sunday Independent, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Prizes, Honors, Anthologies, Stage Productions

• Alpert Award in the Arts nominee, CalArts, Los Angeles, California (1999)
• “In Transit,” production of radio drama, National Public Radio (1996)
• “Waitressing,” essay in Passages, St. Martin’s Press (1995)
• “Mover & Shaker” Award, Independent Living Center S., California (1995)
• “Funeral of the Green Clown,” production at Wings Theater, New York, New York (1992)
• New Play Series, Horizon Theater, Washington, DC (1992)
• Artist-in-the-Community Grant, Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, Los Angeles, California (1990-91)
• “Funeral of the Green Clown,” LATC, Long Beach City Theater, Long Beach, California (1990)
• “Outstanding Individual Contribution” Award, Media Access (1989)
• California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, California (1988-89)

Fellowships

• Fellowship in drama criticism, The Critic’s Institute, O’Neill Theater Center, Waterford, Connecticut (1977)

LINKS

www.citylights.com