Creators and cast members of the radio play-style show talk about it's evolution in honor of it's 10 year anniversary
” premiered in 2012, Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink had no idea what it would become. Milling around the off-off-Broadway world in New York City, the creators and co-writers were simply doing what they’d always done: moving from project to project and hoping that maybe a few friends would watch or listen.
Narrated by voice actor Cecil Baldwin, “Night Vale” is a sort of Masterpiece Theater for those drawn to the strange and unusual: think “A Prairie Home Companion” meets “Stranger Things” meets “Twin Peaks.” Not unlike the “News From Lake Wobegon,” “Night Vale” adopts a community radio-type format, chronicling a vaguely Southwestern American town “difficult to leave, and difficult to enter,” where residents live in tandem with various supernatural creatures and events.
When “Welcome to Night Vale” began, did you have any inkling what the show might become? What did you originally set out to do?We were all involved in the New York off-off-Broadway scene. When you’re in that world, you’re constantly doing projects. Then you make a thing and 20 people see it, and you go and do the next thing. Jeffrey and I had just written and performed a show together called “What the Time Traveler Will Tell Us.” I was like, “Let’s work on another thing.
“Night Vale” has always been inherently interested in conspiracy theories. As conspiracy theories have taken over mainstream conversation these last few years, has that affected the “Night Vale” universe?: I guess it would have to, right? A lot of it is not conscious, but so many of the ideas come out of what [we’re] thinking and feeling that week. There’s definitely been times where we’re like, “Oh, God, our parody has literally become true.