Dufour reflects on upcoming radio play

Feb. 13—BRISTOL — Carrying a thick director's cut binder of his original live-on-stage radio play "KECT on the Air," writer and director Dave Dufour, entered the Elkhart Civic Theatre's stage house to discuss a milestone of his career, his first script.

"This show, we're spending more time on it because it's a new script," he said. "I know we're going to find types and weird stuff right now, but I'm also excited because the actors are going to be able to be able to add and tweak and be a part of the creative process. That's true of any play, but in this case, they may actually be a part of creating the dialogue or refining it or creating some of the character bits that we can use."

The cast of 12 will voice multiple characters throughout the show, which will tell two stories, focusing on the intricacies of radio performance. The first read-through was last Monday.

The stage will be designed like an old-timey radio studio complete with sofas, mics, applause and on-air signs, and live sound effects. The name of the radio show, KECT, was given to honor the Elkhart Civic Theatre.

Other radio plays the theater has been done at Christmas time, such as "It's a Wonderful Life," "A Christmas Carol" and "Miracle on 34th Street."

"We talked about developing our own scripts for Christmas," he admitted, "and then we got to talking about how we could write our own."

It's been about a year since the initial concept was pitched.

The show is directed by Dufour, assisted by Valerie Ong. The stage manager and sound effects operator is Arturo Leon, with Karen Huff on piano.

"One of the things that is kind of fun to watch is the sound effects person," Dufour said. Sound effects will be performed live on stage making sounds of gunshots, footsteps, wind blowing, horses and other sounds.

"They got very good at it in those days, and the sound effects, you wouldn't think that they'd work but they work," Dufour said. "We have a device that you actually put a pane of glass in it and when you need the sound, you close the door on the top and it smashes the glass and the glass makes a lot of noise inside the box ... some of that stuff is interesting to watch."

Gunshots, Dufour explained, will be made using a stick on leather, a popular live radio effect.

The play is written by Dufour with input from Brock Butler.

"You reach a point in the storyline and you're like 'I'm stuck here,'" Dufour said of Butler. "I got really hung up in the first half. I could not figure out how something was going to happen without overcomplicating things."

The original music is by Dufour and Will Fancher.

The show will feature two acts, with one story per act. The first is a film noir Dufour says is patterned after "The Maltese Falcon." Ben Ganger plays Dash Duffy, a Humfrey Bogart-type detective main character. The character is in fact a combination, "Dash" named after Dashiell Hammett, author of 'The Maltese Falcon,' and "Duffy" after Dufour's father's nickname in college.

The second half, a western, gives the vibes of Roy Rogers, featuring a singing cowboy, Ray Ridgety, also played by Ganger. He plays alongside the other lead, Deborah Miller, playing Ginny Bucks in the film noir, and Ronnie Blake in the western.

"The stories tie together in certain ways and some of that is stuff I don't want to reveal," he said.

There will be no recorded sound effects for the radio play, with all effects being made how they would have been during the Golden Age of radio.

"We're trying to get as close to period as we can," Dufour explained. "In fact, I'm not even going to let people mark up their scripts with highlighters and stuff. I've given them all red pencils because that's what they used then. You try to create the illusion as close as you can."

Even the microphones are replicas of the classics, to create the grainy effect.

"It's an interesting kind of art form," Dufour said. "My grandfather, he had a lot of records growing up and I used to listen to his records, and I grew up listening to Stan Freebird, a radio and advertising guy, and he had a radio show on CBS when nobody did radio shows anymore. ... Freebird did a lot of spoofs of TV shows and they were little skits and stories and they were done in the radio type of format. I also used to listen to a group called the Firesign Theater. ... They did what I always thought was kind of surrealistic radio theater because their stories were very strange but they were very funny, very satirical."

Dufour would later join a career in radio commercial advertising.

"We're not doing it as a pure radio play," Dufour mused.

Instead, the story is heard through the imagination of Tommy, a child listening in to the show at home, played by Caleb Yoder.

"There's a little bit of an aspect, trying to play off the idea that radio has often been called 'theater of the mind,' and what's happening in the story is being visualized by the kid, so those people look like he thinks they should look," Dufour said. "Television gives you all of it, but radio makes you a part of it."

The show hits the stage on April 5, 6, 7 and 12, 13 at the Bristol Opera House. Purchase ticket online at elkhartcivictheatre.com/radio.

Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at dani.messick@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2065.