What is Freelance Theater?

Freelance Theater is a joint project I’ve partnered with Yolander Prinzel on — a series of audio plays attempting to take a lighthearted look at serious issues some freelance writers face (while offering a tip or two for overcoming them). We started working on the first episode of this project way back in July. Although it took much longer than expected to get logistics worked out to have it ready, we’re hoping to release one episode monthly moving forward (today I’m actually finishing up the rough draft for our second show and Yo’s already working on December’s).

The MadLance Series

We were inspired by old horror-style radio shows, so you’ll see a bit of influence from that style in the first series we’ve launched — the MadLance series. Our first episode of the series covers the issue of “vampire clients” who seem to suck the life right out of you from time to time. You can listen to “The Dead Don’t Write” at FreelanceTheater.com (the “Theatre” version should also properly redirect for our “Queen’s English” folks). There’s also an .mp3 download link available in the post for the episode, so you can listen to us on the go if you prefer.

While there’s a way you can embed the episode on your own site if you’d like to (a feature we’re hoping future guests will enjoy to promote their own shows), I’m going to ask that you don’t do it for now. We’re going to be switching to another podcast host soon that will allow better embed features, iTunes inclusion and more (if I’m not mistaken), so there will be some minor changes before the next episode goes up.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy “The Dead Don’t Write.”

Note: Oh, and the guy doing the show introduction? That’s Yo’s hubby. He’s awesome. In fact he puts the rest to shame. So a big thanks to Hubby Prinzel for his help with the project, not to mention our awesome WordPress designer and logo designer who will soon be featured on the site’s About page — I wholeheartedly recommend either of them for your coding or design projects. :)

As you can see, there’s really nothing on the site yet — just some dummy text to test features and a temporary intro post until a bit closer to launch time when we’ll reveal more about the first episode.

The launch has been a slow, but quite amusing and rewarding, one. The first show was scripted back in July, and we’ve finished rehearsing and will be dealing with recording and production very shortly. We’re hoping for a launch either at the end of September or early October.

While Freelance Theater will be something a little bit different than your typical freelance writing blogs, you’ll still get plenty of our signature tough love, doses of reality, and smart-ass quips (all accompanied by good intentions as always). We’re combining freelance and fiction to create a new brand of fun for freelance writers. And to be quite honest, it just amused the hell out of us to do it which I suppose is the real reason behind it. I guess you can say we were tired of having to say the same things over and over and over again without it sinking in. We’ve been driven batty enough that we felt the only solution was just to poke fun at some of the ridiculous realities of what freelance writers face (and choose to put themselves through).

So we hope you’ll follow us on Twitter to get updates on the progress, and check out the first show on launch. But more on that later….