Madison’s Mad Facts are a nerdy passion project. While the regular episodes of Madison are meant to be a portfolio (and playground) for me as a writer and performer, the Mad Facts came around because I’m a history geek. I mentioned in the last Musings the amount of research that goes into any given episode. The premise of “Madison on the Air” is that Madison has traveled back in time, right? So I can’t slip and not have the time period be accurate. I listen to as many episodes as I can of the series I am adapting so I can get the tone and the voices of the characters as accurate as possible (this is a technique done by TV writers when writing episodes of shows they didn’t create). But I also do my best to keep the “real life” of OTR on point. I’ve said a ton of times before, that these old shows are a window into the past. For our show, you are looking through the window with a modern eye alongside Madison. And the only way that can really work is for me to get the history correct. So each episode I go down a number of rabbit holes about history. And with Mad Facts, I get to take you with me.
I have a friend on my Facebook who likes to post history memes with “another fact left out of the history textbooks!” And they’re usually about a person who contributed to our world but we never have heard about them. But that bugs me and let me tell you why. History textbooks are about leaders, battles, wins and losses. It’s about memorizing dates and how the global map is always in flux. So, basically, EVERYBODY is being left out of our textbooks. We might know George Washington and the first Continental Congress. But does anyone know about LIFE during that time? No. History class doesn’t cover real life. Which is what I’m attracted to in these old time radio shows.
I mention in the “Bold Venture” Mad Facts how the political climate between America and Cuba before and after Castro is waaaay too big of a topic for my 10 minute history dive. And, honestly, who needs it? I can get a history textbook for that stuff. But when I thought about Marty in the Penny Arcades, I wanted to know what they were like. And diving into researching Penny Arcades opened up the history of coin operated machines, pinball games, why arcade games are usually found in bowling allies… and so on.
And now the world is fuller. More real. More relatable. It knocks history down a few pegs when we realize people are just people. My very first moment of that in my life was seeing the movie “Amadeus.” Classical music was peddled to teenagers as for the Blue Bloods. Only the academic elites could POSSIBLY appreciate it. So, us pop music/rock ‘n’ roll teens just rolled our eyes and snoozed through it. But when I saw “Amadeus,” it made Mozart a real person to me. Someone who had the same push-back to the “elites” as our rock bands did in our day. Oh, yes, the film isn’t totally accurate, but it wasn’t about that for me. It was seeing him as a real person with real struggles that allowed me to deflate the “mightier than thou” attitude music teachers had about him. And to this day, I love his music.
So let’s go on these history dives together. Let’s get a less abstract and more real image of people like us who were in their heyday 70+ years ago. Let’s marvel at what they marveled at and not take for granted what is commonplace today. Let’s live, if only for a little while, in their shoes. So we can bring them down from the pedestals and relate to their lives. And in doing that, find the connections we have today to the people back through time.
-Chrisi (aka Madison)
