Look Up & Roommates – Two Briggon Snow Podcasts
Radio drama, the “theater of the mind” is alive and well, in podcast form anyway. Back in the days of “The Shadow” or even the later “Radio Mystery Theater,” there would not have even been a mention of any LGBT people or issues. Not so with modern-day podcasts. Two in particular are produced by actor/director Briggon Snow.
“Look Up,” a 2020-21 podcast series from Atypical Artists and created by Snow involves Emmet (Evan Bittencourt) and Lincoln (Snow) in a sci-fi drama. They are two teenagers who encounter each other on the beach while waiting for their parents who are on a joint mission to Mars. Their nightly meetings give them a chance to express their hopes and fears and to start to feel more than casual friendship for one another.
Done with minimal sound effects and just a few actors “Look Up” manages to perfectly convey story, character and setting in its ten episodes and taps into not only the universal emotions of love but the pair’s worry about their parents who are literally a world away.
As “Look Up’s” website puts it: “As re-entry draws closer…so do they.”
The setting is very, very much in modern times for “Roommates,” a two character dramady set smack in the middle of COVID on a college campus.
Olly (voice of Nik Whittemore) is a jock and a frat guy who is stuck away from his buddies and has to room with Casper (voice of Briggon Snow.) when the COVID pandemic hits the campus. The two college Sophomores have next to nothing in common and do not hit it off. But the two of them have no choice but to learn to get along.
As this is a romantic comedy/drama, it’s not much of a surprise that sparks begin to at least flicker if not outright fly between Casper and Olly, even though their initial meeting and relationship just sidesteps being out-and-out hate. The two slowly, slowly move towards a truce and a sort of friendship that leads to becoming “more than friends.”
“Roommates” perfectly captures the uncertainty of dorm life which will give a feel of genuine nostalgia for people who lived through it.
According to creator/writer/star Briggon Snow the initial idea was for an animated production but it eventually became the short (3 to 7 minutes each) podcast episodes. As Snow says “the story was always an exercise in exploring what it would be like to be thrown together with someone you don’t get along with during lockdowns.”
And according to the website for “Roommates,” the story is not over even though new episodes have not yet appeared.
There are plenty of other LGBT related podcasts including some scripted comedy and drama series if the avid listener will search on line.
Here is a link to “Look Up.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d3e19712723590001d1dccd/t/60c27d6021de066159466405/1623358816691/LOOK+UP+PRESS+KIT.pdf
And a link to “Roommates.” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/roommates/id1583992123
Jeff Baker blogs about reading (and writing) SciFi, Fantasy and Horror on or around the thirteenth of every month. He is a regular contributor to the RoM/Mantic Reads e-zine https://rommanticreads.wordpress.com/ and his fiction and non-fiction regularly get rejected from many other markets. He posts fiction on his blog https://authorjeffbaker.com/ and wastes time on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063555483587 He lives happily with his husband Darryl and they both listened to “Radio Mystery Theater” as kids and can finish the line “Who knows what evil…”