Actors from the Air Pirate Radio troupe hold cue cards to elicit sounds from the audience for their live radio show, which was dreamed up by Paul Ellis (above). (NY Post: Anne Wermiel )
Actors from the Air Pirate Radio troupe (left) hold cue cards to elicit sounds from the audience for their live radio show, which was dreamed up by Paul Ellis (right). (
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Radio drama is alive and well and playing at a theater near you.
So hopes Air Pirates Radio Theater, whose wacky on-air comedies — replete with a game audience providing sound effects — have been described as a kind of “Prairie Home Companion” with a bong.
Broadcasting live monthly from Warwick, NY’s WTBQ at 93.5 FM, their shows are often picked up by other stations and also downloaded at airpirateradio.com.
“We’ve been heard all over, from England to Texas,” says founding Air Pirate Paul Ellis. “One guy wrote me from Turkey to say how much he enjoyed the show.”
This Saturday, the Orange County troupe makes its NYC debut at the Upper West Side’s Underground Lounge with “Herb Marks,” a series featuring a vertically challenged detective played by MaryLee Shorr. In “Time Wounds All Heels,” Herb battles the Chronologists — an organization with an uncanny resemblance to Scientology — while in “Make Me an Offer I Can Refuse,” he becomes embroiled with the Mafia. The adventures will continue the third Saturday of every month for the rest of the year.
“I’ve always considered the audience to be an extra character in the play,” says Ellis, 63, a self-described “old hippie.” He created the Air Pirates in 2006, taking the name from an ill-fated experiment in 1970, when he and several other performers tried to do theater door-to-door, to prevent people from having “another boring evening of television.”
It didn’t quite catch on.
“By the third house, the police put the kibosh on it,” Ellis says. “But the name stuck around all these years.”
Before each show, he picks people from the audience to provide sound effects like opening doors, screeching cars and barking dogs, prompted by cue cards. The actors never know exactly who will be doing what, which makes for some intriguing (and fun) reactions.
“There isn’t that fourth wall when we’re performing — everyone’s involved,” says actor Brian Nieves. “We’re not playing to the audience, we’re playing with them. It’s absolutely ridiculous, and I love it!”
For an episode of their “Space Cadet” sci-fi series, the troupe needed the sound of an astronaut getting into his space suit. Ellis found a man in the audience who was willing to move his zipper furiously up and down with a microphone pointed at his crotch.
“When stuff like that happens I lose it,” Nieves says. “I’ve had to bury my face in the curtain.”
Interspersed throughout are actual paid ads that go a long way toward supporting the company. Written by Ellis and featuring the troupe’s trademark wacky sound effects, they include commercials for a hearing-aid company, a bakery, a Chevy dealer and a dog-friendly restaurant.
“The most fun are the commercials, because we come up with some crazy things,” says Shorr, whose roles in the troupe’s other shows include “an evil alien overlord” and a French-Canadian scientist.
Theatergoers who hope to contribute something to the Pirates’ next adventure shouldn’t worry about walking the plank if they screw up.
“Even if it does go wrong, it’s right,” says Ellis. “We have four very clever performers who can deal with everything that’s thrown at them.”
The Air Pirates Radio Theater performs at the Underground Lounge, 955 West End Ave. (at 107th Street) this Saturday, April 20, and the third Saturday of each month at 10 p.m. For tickets, $15 plus a $15 food or drink minimum, call 845-469-7563.