FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Contact: Dori O’Dea
7 November 2022 Email: info@speaksvolumes.biz
SPEAKS VOLUMES PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS ‘THE FATE OF HYDER KEYS,’
A FOUR-PART, HALF-HOUR, SCI-FI AUDIO DRAMA WHICH CONSIDERS THAT
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE RACISM STAYS THE SAME.
‘THE FATE OF HYDER KEYS’
-- Premieres on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other Platforms: Nov. 8th, 2022–
[Petaluma, CA] Nov. 7th – When ‘The Fate of Hyder Keys’ premieres on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other audio drama and podcast platforms, Tuesday, November 8th at 7 p.m. (PT) [9 p.m. CT; 10 p.m. ET], series producer, Speaks Volumes Productions, predicts that many in the audio audience will be taken aback. A future where a traditional minority group is in the dominant player that determines what child will move ahead even if that child is brighter than Einstein? This is the premise that ‘lifer writer,’ Larry Bratt, tapping a global cast of 10 Voiceover pros, unabashedly presents through his full soundscape audio drama that is determined to expose the long reach of racism regardless of the prevailing culture.
Says series producer, Ralph Scott: “We knew we were going to take heat the moment we gave the play the green light. We’re hoping that the audience considers the playwright’s message about the overlooked consequences of racism in the context of the full, four-part story, not just episode one. As our Associate Producer, Dori O’Dea, noted: ‘One of the understated victims of systematic racism is…personal creativity.’”
‘Hyder Keys’ follows the angst and hurdles of a 12-year-old boy genius, ‘Hyder,’ who struggles to move beyond junior high school and enroll in the Harvard Enlightenment Program where he will be mentally challenged to keep inventing alongside of some of the world’s greatest thinkers, if only he could get in. A middle grader, Hyder is reading at the Graduate Level; he has scored full 100s on four Advanced Placement tests; and has invented a teleportation device during study hall. But the dogmatic, racially-motivated administration refuses to allow him to graduate. Now A1 Apple Holograms Worldwide, a private technology company, the U.S. government, and China want him. And someone in their midst wants him dead.
Adds Scott: “The writer, Larry Bratt, is serving two life sentences in a Maryland penitentiary. During that time he has authored more than 40 Op-Ed pieces for the BALTIMORE SUN and WASHINGTON POST; he has launched a hospice program for terminally ill inmates; inspired a children’s reading program that secures picture books for inmates so that they can read to their young children on monthly visits; and has been a torch bearer (and often a lightning rod) for prison reform. His parole file reads like the textbook for ‘When the system works’. But Larry, who we’ve dubbed the ‘Lifter Writer,’ is not unfamiliar with the power of the system to suppress creative thinking. And the opportunity within that suppression to make art. As they say: ‘It takes time and pressure…to make diamonds.’”
The first free episode of ‘The Fate of Hyder Keys’ premieres on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other audio drama and podcast platforms, Tuesday, November 8th, 2022. Episodes 2, 3, and 4 are accessible on subscription. The production company intends to post previews.
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Speaks Volumes Productions, a division of TNP, LLC, is a privately held California audio production company that produces serialized, multicast audio dramas with storylines that are deeply embedded with socially-conscious themes. The company records voice actors simultaneously across multiple time zones and mixes and masters their audio dramas in Petaluma, California. Speaks Volumes: ‘Stories were meant to be heard.’ URL: www.speaksvolumes.biz
