Writing and Producing Narrative Podcasts

Principal Investigator
Dr. Ken Urban, Music and Theater Arts; Mr. Christian Frederickson, Music and Theater Arts
Fund: d'Arbeloff Fund
Funding Period: AY2021
Department/Lab/Center: Music and Theater Arts

Creating and Producing Narrative Podcasts is a new course where students will write and produce a short-form pilot episode of a narrative podcast (about fifteen minutes in length). The course will focus on the fundamentals of dramatic storytelling for this new medium which reinvents radio dramas for the twenty-first century. The course will also introduce students to the basics of podcast recording and each student will record and edit a rough draft of their podcast using professional actors. These podcasts will be shared with the larger MIT community at the Podcast Listening Room at the end of term. Alongside the creation of this new class, we will also create a prototype to demonstrate how we transformed an idea for a serialized story into a completed pilot episode of a narrative podcast ready for distribution.