Dispatch From The Tribeca Festival
Or more specifically, from the audio storytelling moments featured in this giant fest
This week I arrived in New York for the start of the audio week, now firmly ensconced inside the Tribeca Festival’s mainstage schedule. To echo what a range of audio folks have been saying online: it’s exciting to see audio being given a stage of this size.
Tribeca Audio Curator Davy Gardner has a stated goal: “To give audio the same kind of exposure that other media get.” To that end, there is actually a red carpet.
Tribeca is a big festival, in a big city, with all kinds of media clout and celebrity backing that make it feel…well, big. They are not the first (hat tip to Third Coast for that), and they are not the only (hat tip to Hot Docs Podcast Fest, Resonate, and On Air Fest), not to mention the industry-focused events (thinking here of Podcast Movement, Hot Pod Summit, She Podcasts Live). Tribeca now fits inside an ecosystem, and it’s nice to feel like it might be growing.
So where are we at?
When you look at the lineup this week, it’s a reminder of what and where the audio industry is: inside these rooms are groups of folks here to share their project for the first time, gather some buzz, find some listeners and maybe even hope to find a distributor. There are also podcast-level celebrities gathering tape and doing live shows, and then film-level celebrities doing their mainstage events.
The idea is that they all share the same stage. Which is sort of true, and sort of not true at the same time. Maybe it’s what we all make of it, and how much importance we ascribe to all. But the potential importance and the clout of being part of this experience is undeniable.
And what a moment to choose to celebrate, when it otherwise might feel like the industry is irreparably shrinking and dying on the vine. It does feel like, and I’m not the only one making this calculation, that long-form narrative series have been taking the brunt of these industry-shrinking blows.
But as hundreds of jobs are being lost and shows are getting canceled, the WGA strike has positioned podcasts inside the juggernaut of their issues…there are still laurels, and there is still work to celebrate. And there’s lots more work to be done.
Sweet 16
Perhaps the biggest thing that’s happening around the audio land of this festival is the 16 Official Selections from Tribeca, those that have been awarded the laurels. They are organized into two categories: Established Creators and Emerging Creators. These terms, mind you, are not highly intuitive, so I reached out to Davy to get some clarification.
“Established” means that there’s some sort of distribution arm already, even if that arm is not planning to publish it for some time. “Emerging” means that these projects are still working to find an outlet or a distribution plan.
These labels do not necessarily accord with the level of career these different artists and producers have already achieved. Based on who was on the stage, it would be hard to ascribe these two terms broadly to these folks, who ranged in age from someone “who was in high school during the pandemic,” to those with decades of experience in many areas of the television and film world, before trying their hands on audio. We are a welcoming and inclusive group, I am reminded, as I see these troupes amass on stage.
These two panels were both expansive; both had eight different creators sharing the stage at a time with two deftly organized moderators. Each piece shared a trailer or a short scene and then fielded some questions from both the moderator and then the audience.
I’ve never seen a panel that big, but I’ve also never heard such good questions to tie it all together—and even good ones from the audience. Mercilessly, we escaped from the soapbox ‘This isn’t really a question, more of a comment,’ and likewise the giantly vague questions like “Tell me how this idea began…”
The works that were selected and presented here run the gambit of format and style. They are better classified as “audio storytelling.” They are not all strictly “podcasts.” As best as I could tell, the formats ranged from audiobooks, to live performances, to fiction and even branching into science fiction. The breadth of work was exciting, which helped to patch over the obvious gaps between “How can I listen to this?” and, “When will it be released?”
The awkwardness of this lexicon is something that I keep coming back to. Maybe it’s not a healthy obsession. I’m working on it.
Most of the projects were vague about timing and distribution plans. I have surmised that’s likely because it’s still largely unknown. Radio Diaries will at some point publish The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories From Heart Island, which will likely be 6 episodes, later in September. At some point, Wolf At The Door Studios will release their fiction podcast “The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen,” but we didn’t get into when or how.
With the move of Tribeca courting unpublished works, I’m reminded that sometimes patience is the hidden ingredient we might need. Bianca Giaever first shared her podcast Constellation Prize at Tribeca in 2021, but she wouldn’t release her second season until May of 2023. Bingeworthy covered this gorgeous series here. This might go some way to explain how the Season 2 launch seemed to jump onto the internet and stand on pointe.
Sometimes these narrative series take longer to make their way into the world than we thought that might, and this might prove to be even more true in these uncertain times we find ourselves in now.
With all these caveats in mind, I still want to say that I anticipate the release of such projects as Weight For It, which is a journey into the inner life and thoughts about being fat, with Ronald Young Jr (yes he uses that word). Or Rebecca Seidel’s Abridged, which explores the life and reality of bridges. Or Magic on a Winter’s Night, which will be broadcast on Irleand’s RTÉ Lyric fm, which explores the creative process of mounting a giant opera production. And an exciting series from David Modigliani, Shalom, Amore, which explores the love story of his Jewish Italian grandparents split apart by Fascist Italy, told through a re-discovered box of love letters.
There are a couple of series that are ready for a listen:
Dreamtown: The Story of Adelanto is a wild ride into a California town that was falling through the cracks, until an entrepreneurial man nicknamed “Bud” comes up with a plan back in 2014: To make Adelanto the center of the weed business for Southern California. What could go wrong? Three episodes are ready to listen:
Wilder Is a deep-dive exploration of all things Laura Ingles Wilder, based on the iconic success of the book, and then epic television series, Little House on The Prairie. The series, hosted by Glynnis MacNicol, is as much a history of the Laura Ingles celebrity, as it is an examination of what it all means.
Free From Desire follows Aline, in their home city of Paris, as they navigate life as someone who has no interest in love or sex…but then has a baby. Also available in French as a wider (hit) podcast under the name Le Journal.
What else happens at Tribeca?
The wider view of the festival features a few Live audio shows hosted by Big C celebrities like Conan O’Brien and Jessica Chastain, that will have guests like Kim Cattrall (on Modern Love, live 06/14 5:30pm) and Paul McCartney (on Conan’s show, 06/15).
And then we have the podcast-level celebrities doing their own thing, creating a big stage of their own. Pod Save America did a live show on Monday…with their surprise guest being none other than Hillary Clinton who joined the fray on stage.
It’s Been A Minute’s Brittany Luse shared a stage with Maintenance Phase’s Aubrey Gordon in a unique Tribeca cross-over moment, where Aubrey talked about the film which she’s starring in, Your Fat Friend, which had its premiere at Tribeca this year, while Brittany taped the show for a future It’s Been A Minute episode, whilst also talking about Maintenance Phase generally.
Thursday evening will feature the debut of the new audio fiction piece called You Feelin This? from James Kim and JT Green which will also offer a “cinematic experience” and a conversation with the creators on the AMC stage.
It’s great to see so many audio folks out there, busy and shaking multiple levels of the branches on all of the trees.
Given the shaky and uncertain ground that the podcast industry has entered into in these last couple of months, this seems appropriate.