Mira Burt-Wintonick (left) and Cristal Duhaime won the 2015 Prix Italia for Best Original Radio Drama for their work with Jonathan Goldstein on the WireTap episode “Five Modern Tales.” | Photo credit: Joe Rodgers
Starting from scratch just four months before episodes were released this June, Burt-Wintonick and Duhaime picked a name, logo and theme song, developed an original sound, and defined what Love Me is all about.
“We wanted to do something immersive where the sound is very rich and enveloping,” says Burt-Wintonick.
The end result is a show about the messiness of relationships, hosted by Lu Olkowski. It’s a strikingly unique, intimate space for sharing all kinds of personal stories and short fictions.
“On a career level, we were both interested in doing more fiction,” says Duhaime.
Having closed its radio drama department in 2012, CBC was unlikely to greenlight a fiction podcast. The producers had to get creative.
“Mira wrote this beautiful pitch where she kind of camouflaged the fiction,” says Duhaime. “It gives people a way in because they’re engaged in these true, personal stories,” adds Burt-Wintonick.
“When you say ‘radio drama’ people think of these staged, dry, old-fashioned, clunky sounding stories,” says Burt-Wintonick, whose short, engaging fictions break from that mold. She and Duhaime’s work is part of a recent movement to reimagine the radio drama as an art form.
Getting to the heart of it
“There’s the ability to get to a more emotional place through sound and radio, whereas television is so distracting and overwhelming to the senses,” says Duhaime.
“Relationships are super complicated in my own life too,” says Mira Burt-Wintonick. “I love having an excuse to ask people really personal questions — it helps me work my own stuff out.” | Photo credit: Ben Shannon, courtesy of CBC