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Director's Notes: 238 - The Big Dig

Added 2023-11-15 15:13:24 +0000 UTC

Hello from cloudy Tampa, Florida. I'm on the road with the Night Vale live show (A brand new story called The Attic! Tickets still available!) For this podcast episode #238, I wanted to talk a little bit about Harrison Kip, and how that relates to me being on the road.

So, whenever Joseph and I write a new live show, we write short guest parts for ourselves. Typically, I write Joseph's part and he writes mine. Anyway, the previous live show (The Haunting of Night Vale), Joseph wrote me as archaeologist Harrison Kip. Harrison didn't have much other than a job title a few brief mentions in the podcast, so when I started performing the part, I just basically chose an exaggerated Texas accent, because it's one of the only accents I know how to do.

And this year, when we wrote The Attic, Joseph wrote me as Harrison again, only this time, he added some detail about how Harrison's religion forbids "suspense and knock-knock jokes," and I really enjoyed that tiny detail. So I added a couple of unnerving anecdotes about Harrison's religion and then I get to play up a bit of his sketchy congregation.

Honestly, this is just a slow-cooker way of developing a character. And after dozens of performances of Harrison, I've really come to like him a lot. But this time as both a writer AND an actor. In my head now, he's basically Night Vale's version of Indiana Jones (and if you see the live show, he's also a little bit of Billy Graham meets Jim Jones).

So I wanted to give Harrison Kip a real adventure, and here he gets one. It was a lot of fun to write, not just for the Raiders of the Lost Ark-style capers, but also to really start touching on Harrison's personal life. He's become a real favorite for me.

-Jeffrey Cranor
November 15, 2023