Big Idea

Big Idea is the story of how the group's director, Jonathan, is asked to write a play, which the BBC will broadcast as part of their Big Idea series.  BIg Idea encourages people to fulfil their life's ambition, and Jonathan sees it as his great opportunity to show that he does really have talent (despite what the other members say about him!), and he sets off to write his magnum opus. 

The Off-the-Wall theatre company are certainly not Jonathan's choice to perform the work of art which will show him for the true genius he really is.  But he's stuck with them!  The course of true love never runs smooth, and neither do Jonathan's attempts to get his play to the stage.  Unexpected obstacles arise to constantly thwart his ambitions, until, despite everything, the group finally manage to present the show - as a live radio broadcast - or so they think!

BIg Idea has lots of opportunities for not only your actors but particularly your sound effects enthusiasts!

Here's an extract - this is the scene from the first act where Jonathan and Alistair (the producer from the BBC) hold audtions for Jonathan's adaptation of Hamlet.  Jonathan hasn't slept for three days rewriting the work, and is already at the end of a very short tether - click here for this excerpt (Word document).

The pictures are from the live performances of Big Idea, presented in the form of a radio broadcast in May 2006.

If you want a flavour of the live performance, try these video clips:

Ophelia's Audition

Barney's Audition

Assorted shipwrecks and battles from 'Hamlet'

Big Idea is published by Lazy Bee Scripts - you can find their website here.  Or you can email them by clicking here.

Big Idea - the podcast

At last, Big Idea has been recorded, and edited into six episodes for you to download.  The cast for this recording was almost the same as we used for Ripping Off Angels:

 

Jack	Howard Turnbull	Anne	Lisa Sadie
Aggie	Janet Holloway	Barney	Paul Buckle
Richard	Kevin Welch	Christine	Fiona Thomas
Sharon	Lorna Welch	Doris	Cheryl Payne
Robert	Ruairidh MacLeod-Lyon	Jonathan	Tim Brown
Alistair	Steve Davies

We rehearsed the play and recorded it in mid-November 2005, but it took until the end of December to edit it into the form you can hear below.  The main reason for the delay was the amount of work that was involved in collecting the various sound effects together - some we recorded, others we got from the internet, others we already had to hand - and then assembling them into the more complex sequences, like the 'shipwrecks' and the 'battle' scene you can hear in episode 6. 

You can download the podcast version of Big Idea by clicking on the links below:

Episode 1	Episode 4
Episode 2	Episode 5
Episode 3	Episode 6

The cast had great fun recording this podcast, and the challenges posed by the sound effects in episodes 5 and 6 provided a source of endless amusement for the sound editor (if not the rest of his family!).  We hope you have as much fun listening to the end product!!