The National Audio Theatre Festival’s 4th annual audio arts show HEAR Now is coming up June 9–12 in Kansas City, Mo. The four-day “audio version of a film festival” features audio dramas, sketches, shows and poetry, live and taped, in addition to workshops teaching audio drama production and story-telling.
The festival has been growing since its inception in 2013 in both attendance and number of performing artists, according to Shelby Pierce, one of the organizers. “Our audience numbers have tripled in the last four years. Performances in the first year only saw 10-15 in the audience, last year we saw over 100 attend and this year we expect that to continue to grow.”
The lineup of audio performances at the HEAR Now festival is broad and performers include Barbara Rosenblat from the hit Netflix show, “Orange Is The New Black,” Julia Whalen from “Gone Girl’s” audiobook and multi-Audie winner Robert Fass. More information on the “HEAR Now” lineup can be seen here.
Pierce provided a brief list to Radio World of audio gear in use. For speakers, Neumann KH120 and various Mackie models will be in use. A variety of microphones will be making the audio fest possible, including Neumann TLM 107, TLM 103 and TLM 102 , an Electro Voice RE 16, an AKG C451-B, and clip-on Sennheiser lavalier microphones for podcasting. Audio mixers include a Behringer/Midas X32 console and various Yamaha consoles. A portable sound booth from WhisperRoom will be used. Audio will be recorded with Nagra Mezzo recorders and played out to attendees with PonoMusic’s PonoPlayer high-resolution audio player.
Ticket information can be found at festival website.
