I'm not an expert except having listened to hundreds and hundreds of radio dramas and audio dramas and read and watched lots of plays and read a fair bit about them. And I'm a musician who once worked in an electronic music studio, back in the tape and patch-cord era who occasionally does some recording work even now when it's so much easier to do so much better with digital recording.
If I were setting out to try it I'd start short and try to really do complete pieces on a time schedule. 10 minute plays are a thing. Some of them are surprisingly good ones written by real writers. There are lots of radio dramas I've liked, especially comedies, that are fifteen to twenty minutes long. If you cut out the commercials and text free visuals, lots of TV shows are about that length. Only being TV they're more likely to be stupid and entirely more likely to just be a copy of something else. TV likes what is safely proven to have sold, before, it seldom tries anything new. I think if you can't get it together to work through a few of those, this is probably not your thing. I'd certainly try to do it unrecorded before spending any money on it, it's stupid to buy equipment before you try it to find out if you're willing to make the commitment.
I would stress trying it on a set time schedule. There are few things that are more of a guarantee of getting nowhere than leaving the completion date into an infinite future which no one has. If you couldn't do a two-character 10-minute play in two weeks, forget it. If I had a student who couldn't learn one of the 2-part inventions in a week I'd be worried. If they couldn't learn one in a month, I'd advise them to stop trying. The deadline is your friend, at this point, it will tell you if you're wasting your time before you put too much of an investment into it. If you're working with someone else, it will tell you if they are not going to work out.
If you are going to have music, which easily five times out of four isn't done well by non-musicians, DON'T USE THE FREE CRAP THAT THEY RUN BEHIND SO MANY YOUTUBES. It would be better not to use any than to use that. Make your own or get a musician friend to contribute something. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, it just has to not be obnoxious or stink too much or get in the way. If you imagine you're going to make money out of this (dream on) you should write out an agreement.
I have no experience with and know nothing practical about sound effects so you're on your own with that.
For recording I like the Zoom H1N and Zoom H5 that I've got. A friend of mine who does production work for a local radio station gets fantastic results from a Zoom H2 that she uses for live recording of events, or used to up till now. I have heard audio-dramas that are recorded live with the cast standing around a Zoom H2 which were quite effective, though they were the horror genre that doesn't interest me much. One of my nieces who does some audio work swears by her Tascam (can't remember the model number) and she makes some good recordings with it. It's a heck of a lot cheaper to get excellent sound than it was forty years ago. I would go with WAV format instead of mp3, you can always cheapen the sound quality later but you can't improve it.
I have used this kind of set up to do two-channel recording of music on the Zoom H1N with lav mics, though the audio quality is quite good - better than just about any recording I ever did on very expensive tape machines -it's slightly less life-like to my ears than the mics on the device. It's good for recording duos. Using the H5's built in multi-channel capacity with good mics does the same thing if you need to have two separated channels. But you might not need the sound fidelity for the cost, one good basic quality mic costs almost as much as the Zoom H1N.
I use the, sadly discontinued, extremely simple to use and very good, Acoustic Labs Audio Editor, which I hope to continue using as long as I am doing this - I'll always keep an old Windows machine to use it on, I hope. I have also used the pretty much universally available and free Audacity software which has a lot of features I don't need. I have tried trial versions of very expensive software (those came with the Zoom machines I bought) and didn't find them superior for what I do. The full cost of one of those cost more than the entire setup described above, including the equipment . I haven't tried to use them on the single-board computers I've been making the shift to. I might try that in the coming weeks and report on that. If it would work on a Raspberry Pi, that would be sweet.
Anyway, I USED to do that kind of thing. I am falling into hard times as fast as anyone else is, now and I'd never try to get together with someone to do something live. If I were writing something I'd have it take place on a phone, right now. You could certainly go through 2-handers on the phone.
Hate Update: Someone can do both, Bunky. I heard the Canadian actor who started out and continues as a song-writer, singer, Hugh Dillon, once make the connection between being a musician and being an actor in that songs are generally telling a story. The skills and experience transfer, if someone is smart enough to use them. Maybe that's why you don't think someone else can do both. He'd know more about that than I would. I like his acting work that I've seen and I like his songs. He's done a bit of pretty unconventional acting work, some of which he's produced, too. I will admit my limited experience with working with theater productions in college was awful - my advisor practically commanded me not to get involved, my advisor was right - but that doesn't mean it can't turn out better than that. You can certainly do both. There are musicians and singers who have done well in both.
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