DAVID OSSMAN

P. O. Box 566, Freeland WA 98249
(360) 331-2813 or FAX (360) 331-6527
e-mail - oworld @ whidbey.com

 

David Ossman celebrates 50 Years in Showbiz in 2009. His career stretches from the infancy of FM radio and the New York poetry scene of the late ‘50s through the Groovy Years of ‘60s L.A. counterculture; ‘70s Fame With Firesign; a host-producer stint with a five-hour “Sunday Show” for NPR in Reagan’s Washington D. C.; solo teaching, writing and performance gigs nationally, settling at WGBH Boston for “Radio Movies” (1986). He was writer-director of such celebrated all-star audio productions as “The War of The Worlds 50th Anniversary” (Grammy Nominee, 1988), Norman Corwin’s “We Hold These Truths 1991” (ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), Raymond Chandler’s “Goldfish,” “Empire of the Air” and “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Centennial Celebration” (Parents Gold Medal 2000).

 

 

 

 

 

David has collaborated with his wife, Judith Walcutt for a quarter-century; the team has just presented “Agatha Christie’s Crime Quartet” as Live Radio Theater at the 3rd International Mystery Writers Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky. Ossman and Walcutt have received Lifetime Achievement “Angie” Awards from the Festival and have been made official Kentucky Colonels. Their 2008 audio productions for the Festival include “Remember WENN,” a collaboration with Rupert Holmes, and a Ray Bradbury/Mary Higgens Clark double-bill, part of an NPR series, “Discovering New Mysteries,” hosted by Angela Lansbury. The Christie Quartet was presented as a three-hour live broadcast over WNIN, Evansville, Indiana in August 2009.

The Ossman/Walcutt team has produced and hosted broadcasts of Seattle’s three-day Folklife Festival, Kaua’i’s 6-hour Slack Key Guitar Festival and many hours of community radio with “Live From The Islands” and “Ossman’s Audiola,” and a decade of stage productions at the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts.

Ossman’s collaboration with the “legendary” Firesign theatre includes over forty years of writing and performing comedy for radio, audio, stage and film.

Ossman is the author of The Ronald Reagan Murder Case, a comic mystery novel starring his long-time alter-ego, George Tirebiter. Tirebiter’s adventures as Vice Presidential candidate are a part of Dr. Firesign’s Follies, an Ossman memoir. Tirebiter’s radio performances have been collected on five CDs and Ossman’s radio comedy performances at the annual Mark Time Awards are also available on CD. His most recent book of poetry, Fools & Death, includes work performed on Firesign’s Gold Medal-winning “Fools In Space” which he produced for XM Satellite Radio. He is fondly remembered as an elderly ant, “Cornelius,” in Pixar’s Number One hit, A Bug’s Life, directed by John Lassiter.

In other live theater, Ossman has adapted and directed The Firesign Theatre’s “Electrician/Dwarf” double-bill, a ragtime “Seven Keys to Baldpate,” “A Summer Radio Festival,” “Through The Looking Glass,” and “love is a place – an e. e. cummings cabaret,” and has frequently appeared as Mark Twain. His favorite role is First Voice in Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood.”

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.davidossman.com/

 

 

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