How 'The House of Branching Paths' brings classic tales to life

Books and stories are the foundation of many childhoods, from classics such as “The Wizard of Oz” to princesses such as “Belle” and “Adventures in Wonderland”.

Producers Carole Ann Miller, a graduate of Southeast Missouri State University, and Mark Killmer had this in mind when they started their storybook podcast “The House of Branching Paths”.

Both Miller and Killmer found out they both had a love for storytelling when they met acting in a festival together. Originally, they wanted to do storytelling in live performances, but decided to start smaller. Killmer had been a semi-professional voice actor and had his own recording booth when the realization came to him that they had everything they needed to start a podcast. He pitched this idea to Miller, on her wedding day of all days and, from there “The House of Branching Path” grew.

The program is an immersive storytelling podcast that seeks to honor and celebrate the ancient tradition of storytelling. Inside the podcast, there is what they call The Circle, a group of member storytellers who invite listeners to sit down around the proverbial fire with them as they whisk away to new adventures each episode.

To choose the adventures or stories they tell, they have to find stories appealing to their audience and from there write a script to use.

“When we’re adapting a story say, for example, one of the large stories for Season 2 is going to be our adaptation of ‘The Wizard of Oz’. So in the writing process, we go ahead and take chapters from that book that serve a larger scene. So a couple of the chapters we strung together for our first episode, where Dorothy gets to us, she meets her three companions. And that was, you know, all of Episode 1 for Season 2. So once we get those chapters, we go through and the adaptation process is then assigning lines of dialogue and, you know, we might need to change a few things here and there for the flow of it and for it to make sense, and we might take out some narration here and there if it’s not needed,” Miller said about the scriptwriting process.

Along with the script, there is the addition of sound effects. Killmer said all the sound in the podcast is created in the studio, from coconut shells used as a horse walking to Christmas tree branches used to make the sound of a scarecrow being lifted off his post.

They have expanded from a team of two to a team of six and a dog to tell their stories in a more immersive way.

“Every episode you get a story adaptation, but you also get to see what’s going on in the house because we all have these characters that we have developed and that we are getting to know more. So you get that storyline as well. In addition to that, the story adaptation, and the writing style, it pay homage to this Greek chorus feel. So as you’re listening to it, you get this immersive feel of hearing the voices in your right ear and your left ear and we’re using binaural sound for Season 2,” Miller said.

Killmer said it is hard to gauge how long an episode takes to create because as a cast they work together in big batches to do the all writing, and then all recording.

In the first season, there were 10 episodes and each were around 15 to 25 minutes long. In Season 2, there will be 22 episodes and they will stay the same in length as before. Each of their following seasons will look more like this upcoming season they said.

On Friday, June 7, in Hermann, they will be bringing alive one of their favorite stories, Andrew Lang’s “Beauty and the Beast”. They will be performing a live recording at the Showboat Community Theatre. This performance will include ASL Interpretation, live music, projections and a special meet-and-greet with Beauty herself before the show.

“It’s gonna be kind of a bit more laid back than, than say like a true theatre show because it’s a live episode recording. It’s gonna be an extended episode that will eventually be available to our Patreon subscribers, but we’ll all be up on stage. We’ll have our scripts and our microphones, and we won’t be in costumes or anything like that,” Killmer said.

Miller said they chose to do “Beauty and the Beast” because it is a known story, but that many do not know the original version of the story. That is the story they tell in their podcasts.

“While people know the story, not many people know the original story, and that’s one of our our goals is to tell lesser-known stories, but also the lesser-known versions of stories that everybody thinks they know and so this was an opportunity to do that,” Killmer said.

Killmer said this podcast reminds him of his childhood.

“From a very, very young age, my mom read books to me, and a lot of them were classic fairytales and fantasy, and I just got captivated by those stories,” Killmer. “As I grew up and learned more about storytelling, tradition and all, I was captivated by that power of storytelling, and it’s a chance to be a part of that tradition.”

Miller also grew up loving storytelling and the different stories that were available. From the known classics to lesser-known literature.

“I would say really we’re taking these stories that some know and love, and we’re also introducing new stories to our audience. Taking those classics and literature and making them something new for our audience now and revamping those amazing stories,” Miller said.

“The House of Branching Paths” can be listened to on Spotify. To follow for more updates on the podcast, they are on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

Tickets for their first live show in Hermann are $10. Doors for the performance open at 5:30 p.m., with the show starting at 7 p.m.