By Nigel Holloway

This is the second play in the series written by our own Nigel Holloway, following the same motley crew - the Off-the-Wall Theatre Company - we heard in Ripping Off Angels. Big Idea is the story of how the group's director, Jonathan, is asked to write a play, which the BBC will broadcast as part of their Big Idea series.

We rehearsed the play and recorded it in mid-November, but it took until the end of December to edit it into the form you can hear below.  The main reason for the delay was the amount of work that was involved in collecting the various sound effects together - some we recorded, others we got from the internet, others we already had to hand - and then assembling them into the more complex sequences, like the 'shipwrecks' and the 'battle' scene you can hear in episode 6.

We then performed this as a radio play in May 2006 in front of a live audience in Cowbridge and Cardiff. The audiences gave it a wonderful reception and the manic mayhem of the second act in particular got very wild as the prop girls, Anne and Aggie, went to town on creating the sound effects. It was also fab to work with two new Concept people, Mark and Anna. Mark played a wonderfully distracted Jonathan and Anna, well she nearly stole the show (or would have done if everybody else wasn't having a go as well), as the delightfully dippy Sharon (or Sharrrron if you're Jonathan).

Big Idea encourages people to fulfil their life's ambition, and Jonathan sees it as his great opportunity to show that he does really have talent (despite what the other members say about him!), and he sets off to write his magnum opus. The Off-the-Wall theatre company are certainly not Jonathan's choice to perform the work of art which will show him for the true genius he really is. But he's stuck with them! The course of true love never runs smooth, and neither do Jonathan's attempts to get his play to the stage. Unexpected obstacles arise to constantly thwart his ambitions, until, despite everything, the group finally manage to present the show - as a live radio broadcast - or so they think!

Big Idea has lots of opportunities for not only actors but particularly for sound effects enthusiasts! To gain an extract of the play itself please visit the author's website  www.off-the-wall-plays.co.uk .

You can download the podcast version of Big Idea by clicking on the links below:
 Episode 1  Episode 4
 Episode 2  Episode 5
 Episode 3  Episode 6

We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed putting it together!

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