Episode 5: Christmas Play

One of the wonderful things about radio's past is audio drama: stories told through the medium of sound. As many students are aware, radio drama was the main source of entertainment in the 1930's through 1962. Dialogue recorded by actors is mixed together with sound effects to create a story you can listen to.

In recent years, audio drama has sprung up again on the internet, with many companies producing podcast dramas you can download whenever you want.

For the holiday season, the PantherPod team decided to produce an audio drama version of one of the classics of Christmas literature: "A Visit From St. Nicholas".

It was no easy task. What you will hear is a hodge-podge of rerecordings. Several additions were made to the original cast and some vocals needed to be completely rerecorded.

For those interested in the technical aspect of things, the sound was recorded using 3 Shure mics and one GoFilter Telephone mic. All four mics were plugged into a Fonic AM440D mixer which recorded the audio using a ZoomH2 digital recorder. Additional rerecordings were recorded on the H2.

Sound effects were added in and a final mix achieved using Soundforge 7.0 and Goldwave 5.4.

Thanks go out to the wonderful cast we were able to pull together at the last minute to make this fabulous radio play possible.

The cast consisted of:

  • Josh Pearson - host/narrator, sound effects/music, post-production
  • Katie Kenney - Mouse, tapdancing sound effects
  • Mike Frekey - Stagehand
  • Jake Stanley - Sound Man (voice)
  • Sam Salvetti - Jerk
  • Mary Voltur - Make-up Lady
  • Rick Paula - Santa


    • We are always looking for new talent. If you want to act, write scripts or learn the ins and outs of audio production, we'd love to have you as part of our team. Contact Josh Pearson, Rick Paula or Mike Frekey for further details.

    Happy holidays to you all.