POWERPOINT ON RADIO DRAMA Research into

'Radio Drama can be produced by anybody with a microphone and a taperecorder. The time is auspicious for rebirth of American Theatre, and radio could be a good place for it to happen.'- David Mamet 'Writing in Restaurants'

In 19A man called Captain Peter Eckersley was the first producer of a radio drama.  He chose to do a well-known balcony scene, from a typical theatrical play called Cyrano.  He got 'Uggy' Travers, a young actress and her brother to help. 

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Two years later the BBC broadcast the first British play written for the radio medium. It was later translated into several different languages and in some countries it became their first radio drama production. Research by Kent University Drama lecturer Alan Beck has revealed important information and background on the cultural and artistic imperatives of story telling in a new medium. It is rather prosaic that Richard Hughes revealed in a 1956 talk that he wrote the play overnight at the request of BBC producer Nigel Playfair. Fortunately parts of the text of his speech were reproduced in the BBC's weekly periodical for the intelligentsia- 'The Listener'.

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Back before there were televisions and computers, there was radio. Families of the 1930s and 1940s would gather around the radio and listen to their favourite programmes such as Little Orphan Annie, Amos and Andy, The Guiding Light and the Shadow. Millions of people tuned in daily to their favourite programmes, just as we tune into our favourite television shows. Radio allowed the listener to create their own images of characters and settings, a luxury that we no longer have in these days of television.

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Radio drama was a revelation for the public as it was in the times of “silent films” so radio drama exposed the one key part of drama and entertainment that silent films lacked.

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Radio drama is a form of audio storytelling broadcast on radio. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the story.

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A BBC Radio 7 production. This radio drama has the genre, comedy. It is a scripted spoof of a chat show with a primary target audience of people aged around 16 to mid 30’s and both sexes, however secondarily it would be aimed at people of an older age or possibly younger than 16 but not children. The social class that this radio drama is aimed at would be working to middle class because although it is a spoof, there is an element of the broadcast which requires the audience to be well educated, the audience must also understand the codes of conventions of a real chat show.

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Radio drama producers would say that they appeal to all types of people such as teens+ of both genders and of all social classes but if you actually looked at the range of people that listen to radio dramas regularly, it would be mainly well educated people of the middle aged population.

http://irdp.co.uk/britrad.htm - Tim Crook  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_dram a  http://radiodrama1.blogspot.com/ 