Last year, Actor’s Express released their first podcast series, “Crossroads,” as part of Amplify: Podcast Plays, their newly created platform. Another series was released in January called “Tucker’s Cove,” a mysterious play set in 2070. Sophia Palmero, who co-wrote and co-directed “Tucker’s Cove” along with Kayla Palmer, joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom to give a sense of her audio play’s portentous glimpse into the not-so-distant future.
Interview highlights:
Palmero introduces Amplify’s newest audio adventure:
“At its surface, ‘Tucker’s Cove’ is the story of six college students trying to do some tasks for this mysterious organization,” said Palmero. “But at its heart, ‘Tucker’s Cove’ is about college students who are dealing face-front with the climate crisis and feel disempowered, and are looking for a way to make a difference and save their futures.”
From the imagined voices of Earth’s next inheritors:
“The way that this particular year of the Amplify program went is, we were tasked with writing for the interns for Actor’s Express, and so… we had a whole meeting with them talking about the roles that they like to play, the kinds of stories they like to see, the issues that mattered to them, and we kept coming back around the climate crisis,” Palmero said. “It felt right to have the story set with college students since the youth are pretty much the people who we’re doing this climate crisis work for. They are the ones who will have to deal with the brunt of it as they grow up.”
“There was a lot of stuff about letters… and we were like, ‘Okay, secret notes, mystery. That looks fun.’ And then suddenly it was this moment where we were like, ‘But what if paper is not allowed?’” Palmero said. “You get to a point where the climate crisis has gotten so intense that you can no longer even manufacture paper. No one’s allowed to make paper. No one’s allowed to have paper. That is an attempt to capture how serious things have gotten and how different the world looks, even though in some ways it looks almost exactly the same… but there’s still this massive shift in the way society functions.”
A vividly realized story in sound:
“I had never written something that was purely auditory, so it was a challenge for me to get used to, ‘How do you build a soundscape for the world?’ So when we got together with Angie [Bryant, sound designer], she really helped to specify that and really laser-focus it,” said Palmero. ‘It was a lot of building soundscapes of locations so the audience could position themselves there, especially like, ‘What do you hear specifically in a place like this?’ You’ve got a greenhouse – there’s wind chimes. You’ve got a cafeteria – there’s the clanging.” Episodes of “Tucker’s Cove,” the new podcast play by Actor’s Express, are out now on major podcasting platforms, including iTunes and Spotify. More information is available at https://www.actors-express.com/events/amplify
