October 14, 2010

You Me … Now! A sure fire recipe cooked up by All the Way Home and Radio New Zealand

Take four new, young, talented actors and give them an idea of how exciting radio can be as a storytelling medium. Then sit them down and ask them to write a twenty-five part, five minutes per episode urban story of families and flatmates, love and loss, music and misunderstanding and any thing else they think might be interesting and … (At this stage you might be forgiven for thinking it’s possibly a recipe for disaster, but you’d be very wrong). Enter the five-week, twenty five episode first series of You Me … Now! cooked up by the writing/performance ensemble with the somewhat prophetic name, All the Way Home. 

For Radio New Zealand this exciting venture is not a risk so much as a solid investment in young talent and in the future. All the Way Home is part of the rising tide of younger creative writers and performers discovering Radio New Zealand is an affordable and supportive outlet for their ideas. A brief visit to Radio New Zealand’s online archive of new drama is evidence of just how pervasive a force is this fresh tide of talent: there are more than a dozen new short plays from emerging young kiwi writers as well as other treats like Go Solo performances. The collection is growing at an astonishing rate. And soon You Me … Now! will make its big splash in that pool of talent.

Any thought that young people just sit around doing bugger all certainly does not apply to the crew of All the Way Home – Sara Allen, Esther Green, Paul Harrop and Asher Smith. Somehow, over the last year or so, in addition to working full time on other projects and just plain day to day work these four have conceived of, planned, written, work shopped, edited, rewritten, rehearsed, rewritten and finally performed as the central characters in, You Me … Now!  

You Me … Now! was planned originally as a podcast series but the excitement it has generated even this far ahead of its launch on 27^th September has meant the producers of Afternoons with Jim Mora have picked up the series so regular Afternoons listeners will be able to hear what all the fuss is about. But listeners beware, the series is likely to be addictive so you will need to plan your afternoon breaks to make sure you keep up with what’s happening to Alice, Johno, Lucille, Jarrod, Terry, Gavin and all the other characters as they negotiate their way through life in the city and around – or sometimes across – one another. 

But web-savvy listeners will no doubt cover all bases by joining the flood of people who have subscribed to the podcast of You Me … Now! ahead of time in anticipation of the launch.

The full title of the series is You Me … Now! –‘a crash course in love’. The first episode (on September 27^th) began explain that title as does the vlog that goes with the series. Alice’s You Tube vlog is called, ‘Accidentally Alice’. Hmmm, food for thought!

So, just when we thought nothing appetising could come out of the flatmates’ kitchen, All the Way Home and Radio New Zealand plates up the sensational  You Me … Now! bringing it all the way home … for you … and me … now! 

You Me … Now! ‘a crash course in love’ produced by Radio New Zealand Drama and written by All the Way Home begins September 27^th 2.30pm on Afternoons with Jim Mora on Radio New Zealand National.

Subscribe to the podcast:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/specialfeatures/youmenow 
More information on the series: Youmenow@radionz.co.nz