Radio Drama

The Radio Drama Handbook combines both theory and practice to lead, stepwise, to a full understanding of radio drama form. Broken down into two large sections, the first gives the reader an overview of English language radio drama in the US and UK and explains a variety of approaches to how radio can be understood to function as a dramatic and performative medium. The second section puts the academic groundwork into practice by leading the reader through the process of developing and creating a radio script and gives an understanding of the unique techniques demanded in radio performance skills. With a wide selection of case studies and practical exercises to make the book engaging and, above all, useful, the authors analyze War of the Worlds, We're Alive: A Story of Survival, and The Terrifying Tale of Sweeney Todd! Each section will be accompanied by practical exercises and suggested activities. Practice oriented and teacher/student friendly, this handbook is sure to become the new standard for all radio drama courses.

The free-standing radios of the middle decades of the 20th century were invitingly rotund and proudly displayed--nothing like today's skinny televisions hidden inside "entertainment centers." Radios were the hub of the family's after-dinner activities, and children and adults gorged themselves on western-adventure series like "The Lone Ranger," police dramas such as "Calling All Cars," and the varied offerings of "The Cavalcade of America." Shows often aired two or three times a week, and many programs were broadcast for more than a decade, comprising hundreds of episodes. This book includes more than 300 program logs (many appearing in print for the first time) drawn from newspapers, script files in broadcast museums, records from NBC, ABC and CBS, and the personal records of series directors. Each entry contains a short broadcast history that includes directors, writers, and actors, and the broadcast dates and airtimes. A comprehensive index rounds out the work.

Radio drama has been around for more than one hundred years and is still vibrant in many countries. A narrative-dramatic genre and art form in its own right, radio drama has traditionally crossed medial and generic boundaries and continues to do so in our age of digitization. Audionarratology: Lessons from Audio Drama, edited by Lars Bernaerts and Jarmila Mildorf, explores radio drama from a narratological angle. The contributions cover key questions surrounding audiophonic meaning-making, storyworld creation, mediation, focalization, suspense, unreliability, and ambiguity as well as the relationship between script and performance, seriality, antinarrative tendencies, and radio drama's political implications now and in its early days. The book thus explores the interplay between sound, voices, music, language, silence, electroacoustic manipulation, and narrative structures. Providing examples from American, Australian, British, Dutch, and German radio drama--such as I Love a Mystery, The War of the Worlds, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--this book has important insights for scholars working in transmedial narratology, media studies, literary and cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, and communication studies as well as for practitioners and lovers of radio drama alike.

Radio Drama brings together the practical skills needed for radio drams, such as directing, writing and sound design, with media history and communication theory. Challenging the belief that sound drama is a 'blind medium', Radio Drama shows how experimentation in radio narrative has blurred the dividing line between fiction and reality in modern media. Using extracts from scripts and analysing radio broadcasts from America, Britain, Canada and Australia, the book explores the practicalities of producing drama for radio. Tim Crook illustrates how far radio drama has developed since the first 'audiophonic production' and evaluates the future of radio drama in the age of live phone-ins and immedate access to programmes on the Internet.

Combines both theory and practice to lead, stepwise, to a full understanding of radio drama form. Perfect for Undergraduate radio courses, MA radio production courses, and radio drama writing courses.

British Radio Drama, 1945-1963 reveals the quality and range of the avant-garde radio broadcasts from the 'golden age' of British radio drama. Turning away from the cautious and conservative programming that emerged in the UK immediately after World War II, young generations of radio producers looked to French theatre, introducing writers such as Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco to British radio audiences. This 'theatre of the absurd' triggered a renaissance of writing and production featuring the work of Giles Cooper, Rhys Adrian and Harold Pinter, as well as the launch of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Based on primary archival research and interviews with former BBC staff, Hugh Chignell places this high-point in the BBC's history in the broader context of British post-war culture, as norms of morality and behavior were re-negotiated in the shadow of the Cold War, while at once establishing the internationalism of post-war radio and theatre.

This collection offers an in-depth study of music’s narrative functions in radio drama, whether original or adapted, alongside speech and sound. It features a range of historical perspectives as well as case studies from Australia, Europe and North America, highlighting broadcasting institutions such as the BBC, RAI, ABC, WDR and SWR, from early radio to the medium’s postwar golden age and contemporary productions. Not limited to classical or popular music, the chapters also pay attention to electronic varieties and musical uses of language, in addition to intermedial exchanges with other art forms such as theatre, opera and film. In doing so, the present volume sits at the crossroads of various disciplines: musicology, narratology, history, literary, media, sound and radio studies.

An essential guide for anyone who dreams of penning tomorrow's radio classics.