Tony Palermo, also known as
SPARX, is a audio artist/educator based in Los
Angeles, California. He performs and teaches across the U.S. and around the
world. He does everything in radio drama from the creative to the technical to the
educational to the mundane.
Mr. Palermo has produced dozens of original radio dramas in the classic
“old-time radio” style of the 1930s-1960s. He writes the scripts, composes the
scores, assembles the sound effects, and directs performances to recreate the
lost art of the radio’s “theater of the mind.” His dramas cover the classic
radio genres of soap operas, science-fiction, detective shows, westerns,
horror stories, historical dramas, and even super-hero spoofs. Mr. Palermo’s
radio plays have been performed by groups ranging from children’s workshops to
community theater troupes to professional Hollywood actors to international
casts for the United Nations.
Mr. Palermo has directed hundreds of radio productions since 1996 and worked
with a variety of old-time and new-time radio talents, including
Norman
Corwin, Peggy
Webber, Art Gilmore, Janet Waldo, Fred Foy,
Yuri Rasovsky,
Roger Gregg, Sue Zizza,
Barbara Watkins, Bobb Lynes, David Ossman, Michael Gough, Lori Tubert, the
Liquid Radio Players,
James Napoli, as well as sound effects greats, Bob Mott,
the late Ray Erlenborn and Cliff Thorsness--sound effects artist for
Orson Welles and Jack Benny. As a specialty, Mr. Palermo carries on the
tradition of radio sound effects as a performer, inventor, and educator.
While the modern market for over-the-air radio drama in the
U.S. is slight, Mr. Palermo also teaches groups to produce radio plays in a
workshop setting. In the space of two hours, he can cast, rehearse, and
produce a 30 minute program of near-professional quality--even with children.
Mr. Palermo employs his own pre-recorded musical scores and directs the
performances in the manner of a orchestra conductor--coordinating the voices,
sound effects, and music cues. In these workshops, 15 to 20 participants
handle all acting roles as well as provide the many sound effects ranging from
footsteps and door knocks to rumbling thunder, ray guns, sword fights and
more.
Mr. Palermo boasts that his audio productions feature the
“world’s biggest special effects budget.” He uses live, manual sound
effects and the listening audience’s imagination to crash airplanes in the
Amazon, have Crusaders wade through an ocean of bones, sink pirate ships,
launch Indian attacks, and even steal Los Angeles’ Getty Center Art Museum.
Says Mr. Palermo, “In radio, you can do anything, and that’s my motto--do
the impossible! My scripts would cost Steven Spielberg millions, but on
radio, I can destroy the world for about five bucks worth of sound effects. We
create a whole world before your very ears--and then, tear it down.”
Since 1996, Mr. Palermo has provided the scripts, musical
scores, and manual sound effects devices for weekly radio workshops at the
Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills, California and New York City.
Nearly every weekend throughout the year, one of his radio plays is being
produced on both coasts. The MT&R workshops have allowed thousands of
students, and even senior citizen groups, to explore the imaginative realm of
radio drama. Mr. Palermo also conducts workshops for the Thousand Oaks Public
Library, which has an extensive collection of radio programs and related
materials, as well as for the United Nations.
Besides his radio work, Mr. Palermo has also written and
scored a series of stage plays for Spotlight Enterprises, a
nationwide educational publisher. These plays, which are tied the educational
curriculum, are for performance BY--not for--elementary school
students. They come with recordings of audio productions of the plays--also
produced by Mr. Palermo.
Always interested in spreading the “Hey! Let’s do a show,”
ethic, Mr. Palermo hosts an extensive website on radio drama resources,
covering the creative aspects of working in the medium. He provides
instruction on writing, scoring, sound effects, engineering, and direction for
use by teachers, students, and fans of the medium.
www.RuyaSonic.com He also writes
a sound effects column for the National Audio
Theater Festivals journal and hosts a network listing of radio drama
artists and technicians to further the medium.
Mr. Palermo also worked as a radio DJ,
TV sound technician, computer consultant, Hollywood prop man,
journalist, and musician. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife,
Carla Fantozzi
and their three noisy children.
(last updated May 2008)
