Hello there, my name is Corey Hickenbottom. From the Cultural District of Fairfield, Iowa, welcome to The P5K Radio Workshop, bringing you tales of adventure, mystery, excitement, and drama. Through the powerful medium of radio and the power of your imagination, you will travel to new places, meet fantastic people, and experience outstanding thrills.
One fateful morning in the summer of 2008, over a breakfast between friends at a local restaurant, the idea for producing a live radio drama was concieved. Over the the course of that breakfast, myself and Gregory Gallagher created the characters of Quentin Blake, Jonnie Kidd, and Tank Phillips. As we talked of these characters, a story began to form, a story involving a low-powered community radio station, the corruption of a small town and the fight for honesty and integrity against all odds. Corey had been a fan of radio dramas his whole life, always hoping to one day be able to produce his own. Gregory, as a fan of early children’s programs, film serials, and classic radio dramas, had also been looking for an outlet to create stories like those he had enjoyed since childhood. Both devoted followers of the classic adventure tales and mystery stories of the past. We knew well the power radio drama can have over the imagination. A power we realized that as decades passed, fewer and fewer people truly understood.
As a result, The P5K Radio Workshop was established for the preservation and presentation of original and adaptated radio dramas. Dedicated to man’s imagination, the theater of the mind.
The Falcon Saga on Truth…Over the Airwaves! was the Workshop’s first experiment in live radio theater. Over the course of its six parts, later combined into 3 action-packed episodes, the quality of production increased from adequate to good to very good and the episodes became pre-recorded. The success of Truth…Over the Airwaves! led to the further creation of other radio dramas. While short lived and far from perfect, the P5K Radio Workshop’s first season proved it was more than capable of producing live radio drama.
We are now working on our second season, and slowly but surely things are coming together. The writing, acting, and production values in the new episodes are above anything seen in the first season, with Murder at Sea looking to be our best work yet.
The KRUU Theater of the Air
Greetings, my name is Gregory Gallagher and I thought I’d talk to you about who we are and what we like to do on The KRUU Theater of the Air. The KRUU Theater of the Air was started in late 2009 on KRUU 100.1 FM out of Fairfield, Iowa. Corey Hickenbottom and myself run the hourlong show every Sunday night at 7 pm. Originally The P5K Radio Workshop aired on Friday nights at 10 on the popular dance program The P5K, the Workshop’s namesake. Eventually, feeling that we wanted a more appropriate time slot as well as plenty of breathing room to play other classic radio dramas, we created The KRUU Theater of the Air. The show runs content from The P5k Radio Workshop as well as original radio drams from people in the community and classic radio dramas. The classics range from Jack Armstrong and Boston Blackie to Escape, Doc Savage revivals, and much, much more. Listen to KRUU 100.1 FM streaming online at KRUUFM.com.
So you see, my industrious partner and I are not simply producers of original radio theater content, we’re classic radio theater enthusiasts. If you’ve looked around the website, you may have heard some of the adventures of 1950s mystery-solving all-American lifeguard and soda jerk Danny McLipstick, or perhaps the thrilling adventures of Jonnie Kidd and Quentin Blake fighting organized crime through their small town community radio station in Truth… Over the Airwaves!. Our current project in production is a tale of excitement and intrigue aboard a mid-ocean marine research station on the cusp of international waters. We love wearing our influences on our sleeves. Whether it’s classic radio drama or the dozens of other pulps, novels, and films of our favorite eras, we love old fashioned entertainment.
It’s with this in mind that we are happy to have a long-running call for content from writers, actors, and producers of material with similar sentiments. Even if your tastes lie outside of our own, we are more than happy to include any well crafted content on our show, regardless of sensibilities. With that being said, if you’ve got a script you want to see made into a radio drama on the show, or you already have a fully produced drama of your own, the KRUU Theater of the Air would be happy to produce or run it. We are also looking for actors of any age and type. You can contact us at KRUUtheateroftheair@gmail.com. We accept not only local content, but all quality material from across the globe.
