For Radio Players Hoping to Stay on the Air, Next Source of Funds Is a Mystery

The setting is a fictitious town in Maine called New Bristol. A narrow road winds along the coastline, rimmed by craggy cliffs that plunge to the ocean. At the end of the road, an old mansion has been converted to a hospital that specializes in treating violent patients whose symptoms have elements of the paranormal. The plot unfolds as a young doctor joins the staff but soon suspects that something sinister is going on.

The story is called Hayward Sanitarium, a radio play in 16 parts written, performed, and produced by a small non-profit group called Last Minute Productions, in Bloomington, Ind. “It’s a horror-thriller-mystery,” says Richard Fish, the group’s founder, who also owns a commercial recording studio in Bloomington. “It’s sort of Stephen King meets The X-Files.”

The first 10 episodes have aired several times on National Public Radio’s NPR Playhouse, most recently in 1997.

But anyone who wants to know what happens after the tenth episode — when the hero is on the lam, suspected of murder — will have to wait until the show’s producers come up with more money.

The last six episodes have been written, says Mr. Fish. But the audience won’t know whodunit until the group finds at least $60,000 to finish production.

The group has been operating on a shoestring, with $9,400 in grant money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and elsewhere, $7,500 from sales of T-shirts and tapes of the unfinished production, and $300 in membership dues. The money has been used to pay for materials and marketing for the show and to send some of the group’s members to a radio-theater workshop.

A dozen University of Illinois students wrote, acted in, and directed the show for no pay. Mr. Fish provided the studio and state-of-the-art equipment, which could be taken to appropriate locations to capture realistic background noise. (An episode that takes place in a graveyard at night was actually recorded in a graveyard at night.)

But before they could finish the series, most of the students had left college.

“At this point, a lot of the folks have gotten good jobs, some have moved away, our main character is in New York as an aspiring film maker,” says Mr. Fish. “We’re all still very much in touch through e-mail and would like to fund the series, but the amount of time involved is not something most of us can do for free anymore.”

The last episodes will take 18 to 24 months to complete, says Mr. Fish. Once they are done, he is hoping to market the show to other radio stations — and perhaps even adapt it to other media, such as movies or electronic games.

Judging from the popularity of audio books and old-time radio programs, Mr. Fish believes that Hayward Sanitariumcould be a hit. “There is a large audience for the spoken word out there,” he says. “We are seeing quite a renaissance in this field.”