Eileen Thorne: Freelance Lab Assistant

 Sometimes you plan out a production line; sometimes it comes to you fully formed.

Take the case of Eileen Thorne.

Eileen Thorne was the lab assistant in the second Public Domain Comic Theater, ‘The Monster of The Bayous.’  The leads for this production were assayed by what I originally called ‘The Repertory'--Eugene Hendricks, David Ellis, Anna Crawford and Vanessa Van Zerr.  These four voice actors mainly take care of small but significant roles in our Featured Serials like Strangers In Paradise: The Audio Drama.  If you’ve listened to the first episode of SiP, you’ve heard Eugene and David as the Student Actors and Anna as Miss Beem in the first scene.  I wanted to highlight them in these smaller productions, so that they could be in the limelight.

Vanessa took a bunch of photos as Eileen; here's one!

What I did not expect as I directed ‘Monster’ was that Vanessa Van Zerr would give such an amazing reading as Eileen.  Some of her line readings reduced not just myself but other members of the cast to hysterical laughter.  It suggested a richer life for this woman, something that could be explored.  At first, I proposed that every time we needed a lab assistant in an upcoming PDCT, it would always be Eileen.  But my mind refused to let it go at just that.

As a big fan of audio drama and British genre television, I was an admirer of Big Finish Productions.  In among its licensed productions of its Doctor Who line was one devoted to what they refer to as their First Lady, Bernice Summerfield.  Originally adapting novels featuring the character, they became original, serio-comic yarns brought to life by voice actress Lisa Bowerman.  In Eileen, in Vanessa, I saw our Bernice.*

Eileen Thorne: Freelance Lab Assistant will be a series of adventures, mostly serialized, featuring the character.  We’ll learn more about Eileen, how she ends up assisting so many mad scientists, and who she is when she’s not wearing a lab coat.  We’ll explore what it’s like to witness so many examples of science gone wrong and be the amorous target of so many lunatics.  The tone will be comical, but hopefully with some good scares sprinkled among the laughs.  Some will be initially available for free at the Two True Freaks Network Feed to be collected later as box sets with extras added for a fee.

What's particularly cool is that Vanessa is an actual scientist, something I learned after I submitted my first outline for the series.  So not only will this production be full of mad science tomfoolery, but mad science tomfoolery with...a degree of scientific accuracy!

The first few episodes of Eileen Thorne: Freelance Lab Assistant will drop in March 2021.

*--Not to be confused with Bernice The Social Media Cat, who maintains our Twitter presence, @Ocadecagonagon