Do you recognize this Petaluma woman’s voice?

Jennifer March has been able to live multiple lives thanks to her job. One day she’s a character falling in love and the next she could be living the life of someone who runs on adrenaline in a thriller. March is able to do all of this through countless hours of work, lending her voice to theatrical performances, on the radio and as an audiobook narrator.

And one of the perks of character shape-shifting and voice work is that she’s able to work from her recording booth at her home in Petaluma. The booth is an upgrade from the soundproof closet she once used.

“It was hard because there's a window there and I didn't have a door. The chickens would start squawking or the neighbors are blowing leaves, or I don't know ... if stuff happens, I could hear it,” she said.

March has lived in many cities in California but has been a Sonoma County resident for 25 years. She has always been interested in storytelling more than anything, theater was a dream she lost touch with until 2006, when her friend Karen took her to a workshop in San Francisco where participants go through exercises where they are living the life of their dreams.

During this time, March had a busy life and was raising a family.

“At that time in my life, I was fully occupied with raising my two boys, pretty much on my own. My youngest, Tommy, was diagnosed with autism a few years before and I was buried in all that that entails,” she said. “I was ... just lost in mothering a special needs child and not doing much for myself.”

She credits her friend Karen for helping her "unbury" herself. The workshop helped March reconnect with her love of theater and acting and made her realize she wanted to pursue Readers Theatre.

Readers Theatre was founded by William Adams in London in the 1970s. It was brought to the United States around that time and March first learned about it in 1977. Readers Theatre is a combination of oral interpretation and conventional theater where performances are stories, plays, poems, novels, essays, reports, articles and letters interpreted on stage.

Essentially it means performing scripts as you read them.

“You just need people to read, it's not hard. You don't have a stage, you don't have costumes, but you can do this thing with literature and bring it alive,” she said. “I always loved it. So, then I went home (from the workshop), and I decided I'm going to start a Readers Theatre group.”

March first discovered her love of performing in high school when she took an oral interpretation class and did some exercises reading literature out loud for the class. This led to her joining her high school speech club. She acted in school plays and went on to study theater at San Francisco State University. After she graduated, acting became more of a hobby.

Taking to the Petaluma stage

She put her plan into action and helped start Petaluma Readers Theatre, a group of readers, writers, actors and directors with a passion for bringing literature to the stage.

“We like having our way with words, letting words have their way with us, and sharing the fun, dramatic results with you,” the theater’s website reads.

Since 2009, March and the Petaluma Readers Theatre group would meet and pick a theme they wanted to base a performance around. For example, if they settled on the theme of “childhood,” the group would source books, literature, plays and anything with words to help illustrate the theme in a performance. Sometimes they would solicit stories and poems from local authors to include in the show, too. It was a great way to promote local works by local creatives by giving their pieces exposure.

The group’s past productions have included, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame“ where the members performed “Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888,” a poem by Ernest Thayer and Abbott and Costello’s “Who's on First?” “Beats of the Heart” had the team combine personal stories with Shakespeare’s sonnets. “Rebel Voices” took a political turn when the Reader’s Theatre performed excerpts from Howard Zinn's “People's History of the United States: 1942-Present.” The show was produced by Rob Urbinati.

The group’s next performance is set for mid-August when it’ll dive into "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder. The story takes place in 1901 and 1913 in the fictional American town of Grover's Corners where the characters learn the lesson of embracing and appreciating the value of life itself.

March was also involved with the Petaluma Shakespeare Co. where she played small parts in the plays.

To this day, she enjoys watching others perform.

“I recently saw ‘Come From Away’ on Broadway. I was blown away. It was cleverly staged, had great characters and all the good feels. That same visit to N.Y.C. I also saw ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ — coming full circle, I guess,” she said of the Harper Lee novel that was the first play she performed in high school.

Hitting the airwaves, social media

March added another creative outlet to her list of interests. She heard KPCA 103.3 FM in Petaluma, was looking for radio content to help round out its programming. She had a pitch and went for it.

“She is so good at it,” said KPCA Station Manager Rob Tomaszewski. “She pulls you into the stories and does phrasing ... all the things that make it interesting. She is an expert. You can’t stop listening, you have to listen till the end.”

She said she has always loved listening to “Selected Shorts,” a series that plays at Symphony Space in New York City in which actors or radio personalities read stories. The idea inspired her to do the same across Petaluma airwaves. March began reading works by Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The show has been on the air for two years.

Listeners can tune into “Not Your Mother’s Story Time,” on Sundays at 5 p.m.

“She is part of the greater-Petaluma community through her Readers Theatre and this ... is just an extension and she does it so well,” said Tomaszewski. He added that March has introduced him to new authors. “She has her finger on the pulse of the community. I wish I had more people like her.”

March has created a podcast of the “Not Your Mother’s Story Time” recordings from the past two years. The show can be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The YouTube channel, featuring 117 videos, has more than 1,200 subscribers.

“My biggest demographic on YouTube are 18 to 24-year-olds. And it's because they're taking English classes, like English 1 in college,” she said. “And they have to read these stories or learn about these authors. So, they go to listen to them, because you comprehend more.”

She’s also lending her voice to another platform where more listeners can be found.

The beginning of a new career

The path toward becoming an audiobook narrator was not as clear as the theater group and radio show. For March, her past work were all small steps in identifying her love of storytelling and now, she was ready to take on a bigger role in that world.

After her radio show took off, a friend, who self-publishes books, suggested she get into audiobooks. Her friend explained, there was an author exchange program through Amazon and Audible where people can audition to narrate authors’ books. In 2019, March accepted the challenge and the first book she narrated was a Western called “Wildcat: A Novel of the West” by Stephen L. Brooks. She has now narrated 40 books.

March’s popularity in the North Bay has put her on the map and because of it, Sonoma County author Frances Rivetti, asked her to narrate her latest book, “The House on Liberty Street,” which is expected to be released later this year.

March explained there’s a lot of meticulous preparation that goes into each narration gig, which can take days or hours. Part of her process includes reading the book through, seeing the arc of the story, gathering all the information on the characters and creating a voice that listeners can easily identify with when listening to the book.

“First thing you do is read; you study the book. You take notes on all the characters and what messages you're getting about who they are and what they are. So, it's still a lot of acting,” she said.

March said it once took her 14 hours to work on prepping to narrate a book.

She is very active in the narrating community, too. She's attended a Bay Area narrators’ group which allowed her to meet others creatives. March has also attended an Audio Publisher’s Association convention and the Audie Awards.

The Audie Awards is an awards program that recognizes the voices of those who narrate audiobooks and produce spoken-word entertainment. Finalists are selected and winners are announced in various categories like “Best Female Narrator” and “Best Male Narrator.” Other categories include drama, Spanish language, faith-based and humor. Winners are judged based on their voice performance and revealed at an annual gala. March said it’s like the Oscars for the narrating community.

March said her favorite part of all her jobs is touching people’s hearts.

“I've always been of the mind that storytellers are a very important part of our culture. They are human beings,” she said. “I'm a storyteller. We all are in our way. And telling those stories to each other is really important to make a connection in the world and for connecting to each other. I think storytelling is key to society and civilization.”