Suspend your disbelief and open your mind’s eye before entering the theater of the mind. Radioman Don Stroup and a cast of radio dramatists and sound artists will take care of the rest.

“It’s TV without pictures,” Stroup said, describing the upcoming performance of “The Enormous Radio,” a 10-actor radio drama directed by Mercita DeMonk that will be performed Oct. 6 live on the stage at the Chicago Cultural Center’s second floor Claudia Cassidy Theater, preceding “The Shop Around the Corner” directed by Herb Graham for the second of the night’s radio drama double feature.

Both radio dramas will be live on stage before an audience and performed by an ensemble cast of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Screen Actors Guild Senior Radio Players.

The dual performance is free to the public.

For Stroup, the producer, and radio dramatists in general, one of the best parts of his craft is conjuring the individual imaginations in the audience into building sets, designing costumes and casting the physical characteristics of actors while listening to the ensemble and narrator carefully unfold the story with voice and sound effects alone.

Selling the premise of a drama to an audience requires a staunch focus on the microphone. Good readers with wide-ranging voices that can turn the script page without making a rustle are required, Stroup said, with his own voice ranging up and down for emphasis. At one point 10 actors get going to create the radio drama.

“A good [radio actor] will talk to the microphone as if it’s another person,” he said. “You have to believe they’re walking the dog in the park.”

Stroup’s voice will be recognizable to some in the city after 30 years freelancing in radio spots for clients such as Sears and Kroger and classics like Nestle’s Ovaltine. His current long-term gig is announcing for “Unshackled,” the longest running radio program in U.S. history, produced by the Union Gospel Mission.

Stroup learned his trade in the South Loop at Columbia College back in golden days of radio back in the mid 1950s. TV was in its infancy and radio was still king. Now as a radio program could also mean podcasting and streaming, he said there is little chance for a younger crowd to get the kind of professional training he had when radio was done live before an audience, he said.

While radio drama appeals to older audiences in general, Stroup said he’s noticed more young faces in the audiences of the six shows performed by the radio players each year at the center. They’ve heard about the “Lone Ranger” and “The Shadow” but know nothing about the wider range of radio drama, he said.

Originally produced by CBS back in 1956 when radio was still royalty in the communications business, “The Enormous Radio,” tells to story of a Jim and Irene Wescott as their newly purchased replacement radio delivers more way more than they bargained for. Plugging in the new radio at their apartment, Irene begins to hear the strange sounds of random neighbors in their West Side neighborhood escape from the speaker.

Real life and its troubles come from their radio, rather than the perfectly imagined mid-century life portrayed in some radio dramas of the day. The play is a literary tool, turning the Wescotts’ apartment building into giant radio, Stroup said.

“The outcome is more than she can handle in the end,” Stroup said. “The squabbles affect the way her personality changes.”

With one more performance scheduled for later this year, Stroup said tickets go fast for both shows. A big success earlier this year was the group’s performance of “War of the Worlds,” which is on the docket for a repeat show after the New Year.