KZSM — Participatory comedy tonight
In keeping with the “entertain” part of our mission to educate, engage, enlighten and entertain, KZSM. org now offers a new Sunday night improvisational radio drama. “The Pork Walks at Midnight” airs Sundays 9-10 p.m. Creator and editor Mitchell Oden and his friends generate spontaneous comedy within the framework of an old-fashioned noir-style detective story. “I have this insane fascination for noir detectives of the 1920s and 30s,” Oden admits.
He plays “Detective Scalia,” “the chaotic person who goes around making everybody mad.” June Strickland voices "Detective Slim," “the one who keeps everything in order.” The hilarious Luke Gaskey plays “the whacky crazy captain who gives us the cases,” and Garrett Buss plays "Ginsburg," a character based on the late justice, who gets fired and re-hired repeatedly. Gaskey, Buss, and Sam McCarthy all voice various characters. Jordan Pilkenton, who also co-hosts “Swamp Gas Uggos” (Sundays 10 p.m. to midnight) produces the show, helps with editing, and plays additional roles.
The concept for the broadcast emerged through improv sessions with Frankie Gomez, the original creator, and the current performers. All are theater graduates of Texas State who became “The Part-time Pretenders,” continuing to practice their art outside their regular jobs. The group recorded a single episode just for fun, then revived the concept for KZSM.
The title for their radio show emerged during a long-form improv session. As the narrative evolved into a detective story, a lone actor stepped to the front of an imaginary stage and intoned: “It begins. The Pork Walks at Midnight.” “We all just burst out laughing,” Oden recalls.
Tonight’s episode, like all the others, will offer surprises for the cast as well as listeners. Oden explains that the performers decide beforehand on “the method of the crime, the location, and what was left at the crime,” and improvise the rest. “There’s not an over-arching story. It’s more like a fun cartoon where every episode is different.” Listeners can sample the show by going to www.tiktok.com/@ theporkwalksatmidnight.
For Oden, the magic of radio creates a perfect dynamic with the energy of improv. “I want to create a world that that the listener can kind of get lost in, and want to know what the next thing coming is,” he explains. The listener participates in the process: “maybe what we said wasn’t even funny but what you pictured in your head is what made it really funny.”
