- Speaker #0
Hi everyone, this is Lisette Alvarez. I'm going to play a awesome crew Q&A on December 6, 2024 from our open studio night at Crosstown Arts, which featured five of our actors, including and myself, coming to Crosstown Arts in Memphis, Tennessee to essentially create a office of Juniper Menendez while she's gone AWOL. This was an awesome... experiential, immersive, reverse escape room. Hopefully, we will be able to recreate this in other cities. This was the testing ground. We had over 100 people attend. It was such an amazing experience. This cast and crew Q&A is pretty short. It's about 15 minutes. Apologies for the lack of audio quality. There was obviously a lot happening at the time, but if... you like what you hear and you want to hear more from these actors and of course many many more please head over to havannasyndromepodcast.com consider supporting us by purchasing some merch or heading over to patreon.com forward slash stormfire productions and become a recurring member so we can get started on other seasons as well as in-person events thank you so much for listening the next episode of havanna syndrome is premiering tomorrow So stay tuned. Without further ado, here's our cast and crew Q&A.
- Speaker #1
We are live. Hot mic. Welcome, everybody. This is Lisa Alvarez with Havana Syndrome. I'm here live at Crosstown Arts. And we've just completed a couple of immersive games with folks. And I'm here with a couple of my actors. So we're going to start introducing folks. Let's start on this end. Your name, your character.
- Speaker #2
And thank you. For my favorite, I would say it has to be, which is a ball of ground beef surrounded by the potatoes and deep fried. Now, it's darling. With the Canadian TSA agent and a rugby player. Pop up. Sorry, distracted by the dog. My favorite Cuban food would be pretty much anything. Feed me and I'm happy.
- Speaker #1
Yes.
- Speaker #3
Hi, my name is Ian DePriest. I play Alvin. I'm Chimba. Not the Chimba. Ex, I guess, CIA officer. FBI. FBI officer, sorry. I'm one of the agencies. And now, I guess, my brain is up.
- Speaker #1
Your favorite Cuban food.
- Speaker #3
Favorite Cuban food. Any kind of dessert that has like a lot of a lot of kind of cream. I haven't chosen. Flan? Yeah,
- Speaker #1
actually I do.
- Speaker #3
I love this. So either one.
- Speaker #2
Hey, I'm Andrew Dos Santos. I play Peter Melendez and my picture is Peter.
- Speaker #1
I'm Wayne, from London. I play the city worker, who's the ex-forger gone straight as an FBI agent. My name is Ruth,
- Speaker #2
and I'm a member of the FBI.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's it. I'm the writer and creator. Yeah. I also play Juniper Menendez, aka Judy Carpenter, who is the CIA agent who's gone rogue. And my favorite Cuban food is, I do love paserinos, guava paserinos. So, yeah, this is going to be a very quick showcase. I want to kind of go around. Before you joined the cast, did you know what Havana Syndrome was?
- Speaker #2
start with you Ralph I initially joined TikTok first so I had some knowledge of what the show was about first and then I started to get some new ideas about how to make it accessible and I started to get some new ideas about how to make it accessible joined as well for the tick tock that blew up and caught you on card but before that i had no idea
- Speaker #3
I wasn't on the Tiki Takis. I auditioned and I did not know what happens before this. So, no.
- Speaker #2
I did find out about it through the Tiki Takis. Just so happens to be on that day. Well, I shouldn't be on this film. Good luck. I'm glad. We did find out about the production. Yeah, even
- Speaker #1
as uh someone was keeping hair yeah it's been about five years no it wasn't so so uh for those of you who don't know exactly even the origins of it um after the us reopened our embassy eva under the obama administration if you guys call um for the first time in over 60 years and soon after diplomats, spies, and military officials started hearing a sound. They started hearing a sound that sounded like cicadas, according to them. But after they experienced it, they experienced dizziness, nausea. Like someone said that their brain was scammed. It looks like their brain had aged 20 years. So nobody, still to this day, there's no public understanding or public knowledge of what this syndrome is, what caused it. And for me, I'm a second generation Cuban American. I'm also the first person right now to go back to Havana over 60 years. I decided to create a show because I especially an audio-based mystery, do an audio podcast, an audio story that was about Havana-cism. And I live right outside DC. Oh, no. But I was very interested in the dynamic of Havana syndrome as a plot point.
- Speaker #2
There's a kid trying to break into the box, then you hit up the IHP, I can't open the box. You can't open the box? Well,
- Speaker #1
actually tell them to come in here. We're going to do it.
- Speaker #2
We're going to do it.
- Speaker #1
Fasten your seat belt.
- Speaker #0
Fasten your seat belt and then I'll...
- Speaker #4
That's right.
- Speaker #1
So we're actually live and recording. Please come in. We're doing a Q&A. So feel free to come in and I'll have the talk for you. All right, so welcome everybody. We just introduced, we have some of the actors for this show, Havac Syndrome, here in person. They also helped decorate this room and deck out this room and create some of these puzzles. um Travita Syndrome is an audio drama spy thriller podcast and my actors are different characters within the show it's a 12 episode series it's premiering now for a digital podcast um I will ask one of the I'll ask one of I'm going to ask all my actors a second question about the show. One is, what was your favorite moment in recording? If you can keep it spoiler free, keep it spoiler free. But mention what kind of got you and your voice actor brain excited. And I'm going to start acting. If you want to briefly introduce these folks. Being a character is a space.
- Speaker #4
Being a dance is a space.
- Speaker #1
Being a dance is a space. Supervisor has no name.
- Speaker #4
She is so...
- Speaker #2
do you want to also work definitely with that some stress builds up that was just a whole lot of fun that was fun it was really good and there's one scene in particular and it's in the third
- Speaker #1
episode so three episodes are now out wherever you get your podcast third episode um explaining that guy down that hallway with the dog he's my actual dad inspired this character and there is a scene where he actually he says something and you can hear over the audio when he's like like he's quite to say my dad that's like every time he gets frustrated that was hilarious love
- Speaker #3
oh no we just did it was great it was like oh yes authenticity hi my name is ian the priest i play malvin ex fbi person that wishes character celia comes for in the need of uh help in trying to solve said case um things that i love about this course our table read was wonderful than wanting to like be across first quite some time uh i enjoyed that thoroughly uh but aside from that recording live and being my director from you was was a wonderful
- Speaker #1
yeah we were live here in memphis and yeah i just um
- Speaker #3
I enjoy it because my character, their roots are from the similar roots that I'm from. This accent that you hear now is the thing that I kind of crafted through my own immigrant journey. And it is very, it's something really special to kind of like go back home and like speak in your own original home kind of concept. And when I finally am able to do that and show it, it's a very special thing too. So yeah, it's like just finding that place where it sits and not making it like a big dramatic thing, an exaggerated caricature that makes it so special. That's it. One of my favorites.
- Speaker #1
i love alvin's one of my favorite shows he's gonna come back to see you all right uh
- Speaker #2
maybe a TSH number three, and a rugby player to be determined later.
- Speaker #1
I think we have a bonus episode.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, the bonus episode. My favorite thing about this whole process, ticky-tocky process, was that this is my first time doing this. I had done some voiceover work for work for these and thought, I should do this. Best part about this is Ian and I recorded together here at Crosstown. Seeing process, just getting into character, seeing how it's all done, seeing how the sausage is made, essentially, was just mind-blowing. to me of oh okay this may be something that i can do anybody let's and that was just perfect with correction and getting everything situated and stuff it was really
- Speaker #1
a fine work both of you one of your favorite moments in the recording
- Speaker #2
only sticky notes the first is the first real clash between the movie through expectations than the internal ones. So I would go into the blinds and come up with an idea of how to use that situation and how you can cope with what's going on. So at times, I would end with a punchline as opposed to what originally thought to be something a little more serious than those. And we ended up doing quilt takes of...
- Speaker #1
lines. That was. I love working with my especially because I was able to do it with essentially all of you I was able to do readings.
- Speaker #0
And I think everyone except for you,
- Speaker #1
I think, were being recorded to get the inverter. That was, I love working with voice actors. My favorite thing is multi-hyphenate producer. We'll wrap this up and if you want to hear some of your favorite. to Havana Syndrome, a spy thriller, now playing wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much.
