A new play by Audible recalls radio plays of old, but with a fresh, modern eye

A dimension of sight. A dimension of sound. A dimension of mind.

That's what drama is — as Rod Serling used to remind us at the beginning of each "Twilight Zone."

But what if you removed one of those dimensions? Say, the dimension of sight?

Audible, the audiobook streaming and podcast service based in Newark, has been looking into those possibilities since 1995. The company makes some 760,000 titles, in 38 languages, available on multiple platforms. Novels, plays, magazines, newspapers, texts of all kinds, with one thing in common: They're aimed at the ear, not the eye.

But Audible is not just interested in recording the Great Works of Literature. Or even the less-great works of literature. Preexisting texts are only part of the program.

Since 2000, the company has been commissioning new theater pieces, specifically for audio production — and with a stress on underrepresented voices.

Which is how playwright Yilong Liu — his theater career stalled by pandemic two years ago, along with everyone else's — found himself writing a new play, commissioned by Audible.

"It felt very anchoring, at a time when there was no theater," said Liu, a Brooklyn resident whose play "Good Enemy" will now be finding audiences on two platforms.

One is the most traditional, and literal, of all platforms: the stage.

His play, about an old-school Chinese father (Francis Jue) on a cross-country trip to New York to see his Americanized college-student daughter (Geena Quintos), and the generational and historical reckoning that follows, is at New York's Minetta Lane Theatre through Nov. 27.

But soon after the cast members take their final curtain calls, they'll be reassembling in the recording studio to re-create "Good Enemy" before Audible's microphones. The audio version is expected out in early 2023.

"Writing in audio has afforded our writers a fun challenge, writing without the benefit of visuals," said Kate Navin, head of Audible Theater. "It means that you can let the audience use their imagination while creating an incredible intimacy that is hard to get in other mediums."

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Feast for the ear

Audible has been staging plays at the Minetta Lane since 2018. And all the writers who have accepted Audible's challenge have had to think on multiple levels: fashioning a piece designed to function equally well as a live play and a pure audio experience. Each writer, Liu says, approaches it differently.

"I know other writers are thinking about the audio format, what audio can do," he said. "I was just trying to get the story out. I wasn't letting the audio aspects stop me from writing. There will be a lot of support later on from the sound designer, to help me translate the story into an audio format."

Audio plays are not, of course, new.

Radio's brief golden age — roughly 1925 to 1955 — was brimming with dramas, comedies and serials that invited their audiences to watch with their ears.

Some few even went further: treating the audio play as a medium unto itself, playing games with it, and writing to its strengths. "War of the Worlds," famously, told its story in the form of news bulletins. "Sorry, Wrong Number" was a murder mystery told through a series of phone calls. Audible is taking up where they left off.

"It’s been fun exploring what stories work best in audio," Navin said. "For example, psychological thrillers or quiet solo shows all really soar in audio."

But the COVID catastrophe gave Audible's playwrights a whole new reason to explore what is still — 100 years after the first radio plays — an underused form of expression.

In March 2020, suddenly, there were no performances, no audiences. Playwrights and actors had a lot of free time. There was an inclination to experiment — and nothing to lose.

That was precisely the situation Liu found himself in, when Audible came knocking. "For a year or so, there was no live theater," he said.

Distant relatives

Originally from southern China, educated at the University of Hawai‘i and Juilliard, Liu is a busy dramatist whose works include "June is the First Fall," "Joker," and "PrEP Play, or Blue Parachute." His play "The Book of Mountains and Seas" was just about to open in San Francisco, in March 2020, when the COVID curtain came down — and with it, his own.

"We had one preview, and then the production had to shut down, and the play never opened," he said. "I flew back to New York."

But Liu, as it happened, was exactly the kind of playwright Audible was looking for. A young voice. Fresh. And non-mainstream.

"Audible is a global company, and our listeners are as diverse as the world is," Navin said. "Of course we’d want our creators and stories to reflect this reality — it’s the surest way to deliver content that is appealing for as wide an audience as possible. The other truth is that right now, we need to hear more stories from new and different points of view."

Audible reached out. Would Liu would be interested in applying to its emerging playwrights program? He would.

"I started writing this play during the middle of the pandemic, which is also the time I got the commission," he said. "It was a very centering thing. I had the financial support, I had the artistic support."

But the pandemic inspired "Good Enemy" in more ways than one.

The isolation, and the distance it put between people, was what galvanized Liu to write a story about the vast territory — physical, generational and cultural — that separates a parent and a child.

The play isn't autobiographical. But it is personal.

"During the pandemic, like everyone else, I was separated from my family," he said. "I really worried about my parents, and they worried about me. They live in China, and they would call me every day. At first it was weird, uncomfortable. It's been 10 years since I moved to the U.S., and there's a lot of distance and difference between us."

But paradoxically, the remoteness ended up making them more — not less — intimate.

"I started asking very personal questions," Liu said "And my mother started telling stories from her childhood, and gradually she was telling me how she met my dad."

By the end, in other words, both of them had started to really listen. And listening, as Audible could tell you, is what it's all about.

"This play is not actually about my parents," Liu said. "The story is functional. But I feel the play is inspired by that desire to connect."

"Good Enemy," through Nov. 27 at the Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane, New York, NY. audible.com/ep/minettalane

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: 'Good Enemy,' a play about family and distance, from Audible