A Lovely Introduction

Hi folks,

Wishing you the very best for the coming week from everyone at Rusty Towers!

Very excitingly, we are delighted this week to be introducing a new show to the RQ Network. The Lovely Dark is a fiction anthology that explores how about how darkness in our lives may reveal a path to love and light.

Each of these short audio plays is written by an award-winning writer and performed by a cast of remarkable actors, including Oscar winners and members of New York City’s Labyrinth Theatre Company. Each episode is produced with a full cast, a beautiful, immersive soundscape and an original score.

The creator and director of the show, Charles Goforth, was kind enough to write a little about the show, his background and how the show came to be made.

I’m Charles Goforth, a director, actor & producer in New York City. For many years, I’ve been a member of New York City’s Labyrinth Theater Company. Because the company produces exclusively the premieres of new plays, I have a lot of experience working with playwrights on new plays, as a director and during development. My work with playwrights saved my life once. They write about what keeps them up at night, and dig into shadowy and dangerous places. So when I was in a terrible darkness of my own, I knew that if we can look right at it, accepting darkness can reveal new pathways to courage, love and yes, light.

During COVID lockdown, reflecting on my own awful time and feeling the collective darkness, I wanted to test a theory: that maybe stories from the dark, stories that looked at it sincerely and with humor, could offer light to an audience as they had me, and to remind everyone that we’re connected in our frailty and our strength, both. Who better to write such stories than writers like those whose company had sustained me through my own dark times?

The Lovely Dark approaches writers we love, and commissions short audio plays with prompts that invite the writers into shadowy places. They enter the dark and almost always return with tales of humor, hope, resilience, and love. These stories radiate with weird, alluring light that emerges in the dark.

I’m proud of how our process takes care of the artists and our audience: we commission original audio plays, develop the scripts with great care, bring in top-level actors, and then during several weeks we edit, invent sound and compose an original score for each episode. All in support of the story, the artists and those who have honored us by listening. I’m proud of what we’ve learned in season one, and grateful to the whole creative team, whose talent, chops and work ethic make it all possible.

You can listen to The Lovely Dark wherever you find podcasts, or on the Rusty Quill website. If you enjoy the show, please consider rating it or leaving a review.

As we mentioned last week, there won’t be an episode of Cry Havoc this week, as we take a break at the midpoint of the show. We’ve loved bringing this roman comedy to life to you all, and hope you are enjoying it. What have been your favourite moments of the show so far? How many familiar Rusty Quill crew voices have you spotted making cameos in the show? 

If you haven’t yet checked out the show, or if you’ve got a few episodes to catch up on, now is the perfect time to sit back and enjoy ten episodes of this sitcom, described in The Telegraph as “somewhere between Succession and Up Pompeii!” and “funny and arch, frantic and panicked” by Alasdair Stuart in The Full Lid. Knights and Nobles can access the whole series, ad free here on Patreon. Citizens, you’ll be able to find the show wherever you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple, YouTube and more. Please do consider leaving a review or rating and voting for us in the British Podcast Awards Listener’s Choice Awards. These types of awards are a huge deal for new podcasts. Speaking of The British Podcast Awards, please do extend your congratulations to writer of Cry Havoc, David K Barnes, for his nomination for Wooden Overcoats.

While there’s no main feed episode this week, there will be a backstage episode shared on Friday for Knights+ tiers. This week, join Lowri, director Amani Zardoe and Rusty Quill’s executive of production, April Sumner to talk about the process for casting the show. Cry Havoc has a huge cast of characters, all of whom needed unique voices. Together they run through how the list of characters and identify leads verses smaller roles, about how they cast around UK regional accents and the thought that went in when we cast Cleopatra.

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team