Portland Story Theater to Launch New Weekly Podcast Series ‘Urban Tellers®’

Portland, OR ‒ September 6, 2017 ‒ Portland Story Theater is expanding the reach of its live programming into the realm of podcasts with a new series called Urban Tellers®. Each weekly episode runs about 45-60 minutes, focusing on a new story from the live shows, and features an in-depth, unscripted interview with the storyteller by hosts Lawrence Howard and Lynne Duddy. Listeners will get an inside view into the people, the process, and the story behind the story.

The Urban Tellers® series kicks off on October 1 with David Dale’s story, “I’m Alright.” This story explores many of the important questions in life, like: What does God expect from us? What does Mom expect? What does “perfect” mean and where do we go when we die? Lynne and Lawrence explore the answers to these important questions and many more when David Dale talks with them on this first-ever Urban Tellers® podcast.

The series is supported by a generous grant from the Milwaukie-based Kinsman Foundation. This gift, matched by Portland Story Theater’s Narrative Network donors, makes it possible to commit to a weekly episode for the entire 2017-2018 season, October through June.

To create this new podcasting initiative, Portland Story Theater is working with Warren McPherson, of Sweetlime Productions, as senior editor and creative director. The podcasts are produced out of Portland Story Theater’s home studio in NE Portland. They’ll be available via the websites of Portland Story Theater (pdxstorytheater.org and urbantellers.org) as well as Apple Podcasts (iTunes) and other podcasting apps.

The podcast interview in many ways is as intense as creating the story in the first place. The depth and pacing of the interview is vital and so is the space where these interviews take place. “We’ve decided to conduct our interviews in the same space where we hold our workshops,” Howard said, “Trust is critical when tapping into a person’s creative, vulnerable place and this space gives people that sense of safety that we’ve developed with them when helping them discover and craft their stories.”

Working closely with executive producers Howard and Duddy, McPherson’s vision is to capture the essence of the creative process that happens during the story development. According to McPherson, “We wanted to take an approach that best expresses our brand of storytelling development and translate that to the podcast form.”

Portland Story Theater is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization which strives to make the narrative arts an integral part of Pacific Northwest’s rich cultural identity. Founded in 2004, the organization is committed to bringing an authentic story and theater experience to enrich, inspire, challenge and expand connection within the urban environment through the narrative arts.

Sweetlime Productions is a small, boutique production company that makes movies and produces podcasts and local radio shows. Sweetlime Productions wants to tell good stories, no matter what the medium.