Ballarat National Theatre is proud to announce that our Pride and Prejudice Podcast has been announced as a Webby Award Honoree in the 25th Annual Webby Awards (Limited Series Podcast – Scripted Fiction).
This award category has 5 honorees and 5 nominees comprising of podcasts from international names like HBO, Comedy Central and BBC. To have the name of a small, regional, Australian, not-for-profit theatre company alongside major, acclaimed production companies is an exciting acknowledgment for the broader Australian theatre and arts scene.
Earning the distinction of Webby Honoree, as recognized by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences is a significant achievement—granted to only the top 20% of the nearly 13,500 projects entered in the 25th Annual Webby Awards.
The Pride and Prejudice Podcast is the creative vision of Director Liana Skewes and her co-creator and narrator Olivia French. It comprises a dramatic adaption of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice novel as an audiobook with music, ambient sounds, and 27 actors playing each individual character. The full story spans over 30 episodes and 14.5 hours of entertainment.
The project was undertaken by Ballarat National Theatre at the start of the pandemic as a way of staying active as a theatre company when all other avenues of stage performance were canceled or postponed. The 27-actor strong performance has picked up fans from 121 different countries.
In order to bring the project to life, starting in Victoria’s first lockdown, Liana learned how to sound edit to build the episodes. Olivia, the story’s Narrator and Elizabeth Bennet, recorded over 120,000 words of performance.
Incredibly, everyone involved in the production is a volunteer, passionate about local theatre and making sure that the arts were kept alive during the pandemic.
Thank you for being part of this incredible journey with us!