Writing Audio Drama by Tim Crook published by Routledge 31st March 2023
Book Description
Writing Audio Drama offers a comprehensive and intelligent guide to writing sound drama for broadcasting and online. This book uses original research on the history of writing radio plays in the UK and USA to explore how this has informed and developed the art form for more than 100 years.
Audio drama in the context of podcasting is now experiencing a global and exponential expansion. Through analysis of examples of past and present writing, the author explains how to create drama which can explore deeply psychological and intimate themes and achieve emotional, truthful, entertaining and thought-provoking impact. Practical analysis of the key factors required to write successful audio drama is covered in chapters focusing on audio play beginnings and openings, sound story dialogue, sustaining the sound story, plotting for sound drama, and the best ways of ending audio plays. Chapters are supported by online resources which expand visually on subjects discussed and point to exemplary sound dramas referenced in the chapters.
This textbook will be an important resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses such as Podcasting, Radio, Audio Drama, Scriptwriting, and Media Writing.
The content of all the companion web-pages for this project is in the process of development, and completion is expected 31st December 2024 following the publication of the printed book 31st March 2023. Many thanks for your patience and consideration.
Richard Hughes, playwright
The playwright and novelist Richard Hughes (1900 – 1976) has been frequently credited with and celebrated for being the author of the world’s first radio play, A Comedy Of Danger.
It has since been established that other writers had originated radio plays for broadcasting in the UK and abroad before him.
However, the script commissioned from him by the director/producer Sir Nigel Playfair and the BBC which was broadcast on 15th January 1924 is rightly evaluated as a landmark in the development of writing drama specifically for the ear and microphone performance and production.
15th January 2024. Danger– 100 years since the BBC’s broadcast of the first radio play written for an adult audience
The poet, playwright and novelist Richard Hughes (1900-1976) was only 23 in January 1924 when he was asked by the theatrical producer Nigel Playfair to write a play for effect by sound only, in the same way that film plays are written for effect by sight only.
They were having coffee. Playfair had been commissioned by the early BBC to put together an evening of playlets experimenting with the new radio medium.
Previously some brilliant and creative women had laid the foundations with Phyllis M Twigg writing a half hour play for children broadcast Christmas Eve 1922 The Truth about Father Christmas as told by The Fairy Dustman, and Cathleen Nesbitt adapting and directing the BBC’s first season of four full-length Shakespeare plays for the radio in 1923. In November that year Milton Rosmer had produced Gertrude Jennings’ one act stage comedy Five Birds In A Cage, the first modern stage play to be broadcast by the BBC from a studio.
Playfair was short of material. Two pieces were derivative. ‘You know, Hughes’, he remarked suddenly. ‘I believe what is really wanted for broadcasting is something specially written for the job. A pity there’s no time now to get it done; we begin rehearsing after lunch tomorrow.’
Richard Hughes was a rising star author having had a hit with his one act The Sisters’ Tragedy at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square in 1922. He was rehearsing a trilogy of Welsh plays with his stage company The Portmadoc Players which would open at the Lyric Hammersmith 24th February 1924. The Prince of Wales and future Edward VIII would publicly send his best wishes.
Hughes specialised in writing the then fashionable genre of grand guignol, which combined horror and thriller to entertain.
He had been listening to radio drama and had started writing something over Christmas. He offered to have something for Nigel Playfair the following morning.
What he produced overnight was a work of genius. The title The Comedy of Danger was ironic and it would later be called by the single word title Danger.
A young man and woman, Jack and Mary are taken down a Welsh coal mine by Mr Bax, an elderly man with a gruff voice. All three are plunged into an intense action drama when the lights go out, then there’s an explosion and finally the mine floods with water. Will they die and experience their last moments in complete darkness or will they escape and be rescued? A claustrophobic disaster and horror mise en scène full of drama and suspense.
It captured the imagination of listeners and media. The disaster plot was topical.
In 1913, 439 miners perished in the gas explosion at the Senghenydd Colliery Disaster in Glamorgan. The haunting sound in the play of Welsh miners singing to console themselves in the darkness of the pit was powerfully resonant. 344 men died in the Pretoria Pit disaster in Lancashire in 1910 when there had been an underground explosion at the Hulton Colliery near Bolton.
Most of the BBC 2LO audience on 15th January 1924 listened on headphones and the announcer advised lights should be turned down and the play heard in darkness or by fire-light.
Hughes began the play with immediate suspense. The audience would be hooked from the first second:
MARY(sharply). Hello! What’s happened?
JACK. The lights have gone out!
MARY. Where are you?
JACK. Here.
[Pause. Steps stumbling.]
MARY. Where? I can’t find you.
JACK. Here. I’m holding my hand out.
MARY. I can’t find it.
JACK. Why, here!
There was also genius in the way the BBC enchanted newspaper and magazine reporters by inviting them to watch the production live at Savoy Hill.
A roaring explosion sound was created for them by firing a gun in their darkened media room so they literally jumped out of their skins. The editor of Popular Wireless said the effect was ‘sepulchral in the extreme.’
Some of the journalists were allowed to see how it was done and watched the actors Joyce Kennedy, Kenneth Hunt and H.R. Hignett performing in evening dress and moving swiftly backwards and forwards around the microphone.
The writer Richard Hughes helped with the effects. The magic of a sieve containing thousands of lead shots produced the sound of rushing and swishing water. Wood scraping sandpaper and a theatrical wind machine added to the effects of flooded mine, rescue party’s pickaxes, and answering taps on the walls from entrapped miners.
Most haunting were the Gwalia Singers performing miners singing Welsh hymns in the distance. They did this outside the second door of the studio and called out through glass lamp chimneys thus producing a hollow, far-away and echoing effect.
The broadcast was a triumph. The acting legend Ellen Terry said: ‘No greater performance have I ever heard which has produced such a thrill on an unseen audience.’ Richard Hughes was invited by the Evening Standard and national Daily News to write articles on ‘How Wireless Plays Are Done’ and ‘Drama For The Ear Only.’
Popular Wireless was inspired to start a competition offering writers a prize of £5 for the best plot of a new radio play. In July 1924 the BBC would appoint its first Director of Drama Productions R.E. Jeffrey.
The Comedy of Danger captured the zeitgeist. It was the first ever radio play produced by public radio in Japan. NBC in the USA would produce it in 1927 along with other radio services all over the world.
And the BBC would reproduce it at least thirteen times during the 20th century up until 1982 when it was first produced in binaural stereo. It would often be celebrated in radio drama festivals.
In 1956, the then editor of BBC Radio Drama Val Gielgud said it had not dated at all and ‘its technical mastery remains a model of its kind.’
Richard Hughes wrote four more radio plays, The Man Who Sang In His Bath, broadcast once in April 1924, Christopher Columbus- an Historical Listening Play, broadcast seven times in 1925, Congo Night, broadcast once in November 1926, and We Gave Our Grandmother, broadcast two times in 1937. He became known mainly for his novel A High Wind in Jamaica.
He will always be remembered for turning out the lights at the beginning of his play Danger and lighting up the future of radio and audio drama.
Timeline of productions and broadcasts of radio plays by Richard Hughes and in particular-
The Comedy of Danger
First broadcast Tue 15th Jan 1924, 19:30 on the BBC’s 2LO London station. Produced and directed by Nigel Playfair.
Then:-
Sat 15th Mar 1924, 20:25 on BBC’s 5WA Cardiff radio station. Produced and directed by A. Corbett-Smith
A new and second radio play The Man Who Sang In His Bath produced by Lewis Casson Tue 1st Apr 1924, 19:30 on 2LO London
Sat 14th June 1924 20:50 on BBC’s 5WA Cardiff radio station. A Comedy of Danger Produced and directed by A. Corbett-Smith. This production and broadcast was not listed or scheduled in the Radio Times. Its existence was marked by an article in the regional newspaper the Western Mail.
In January 1925 there were three live productions of A Comedy of Danger now titled by the one word Danger and styled as ‘The Mine Play’ and produced by the new Director of Drama Productions R.E. Jeffrey from the London 2LO station with a company of actors called ‘The 2LO Quartet.’ These special transmissions were for:
Tue 20th Jan 1925, 22:40 on 2BD Aberdeen
Fri 23rd Jan 1925, 22:30 on 5NO Newcastle
Wed 28th Jan 1925, 19:50 on 2LO London [according to the Radio TImes ‘in response to many requests.’]
The third radio play written by Richard Hughes was Christopher Columbus- An Historical Listening Play produced by R E Jeffrey at the London 2LO station with ‘The Repertory Players.’ This was broadcast seven times during 1925 between May and July:
Fri 15th May 1925, 21:15 on 2BD Aberdeen
Wed 27th May 1925, 21:15 on 2ZY Manchester
Fri 5th Jun 1925, 21:10 on 2LO London
Fri 19th Jun 1925, 22:30 on 6BM Bournemouth
Wed 24th Jun 1925, 21:15 on 5NO Newcastle
Fri 3rd Jul 1925, 21:15 on 5WA Cardiff
Mon 13th Jul 1925, 21:15 on 5SC Glasgow
The fourth radio play written by Richard Hughes was Congo Night. Broadcast on Mon 8th Nov 1926, 20:30 on BBC’s 2LO London radio station as part of the first ‘Wireless Week.’ Produced and directed by Howard Rose. In the issue for Radio Times that week scheduling and promoting the play, the magazine advised listeners ‘To get the right atmosphere for listening to this play, lights should be turned down and the play heard in darkness or by fire-light.’ The BBC’s first director of Drama Productions R E Jeffrey also wrote one of the first articles on the creative theory of radio drama as an art form- ‘Seeing the Mind’s Eye.’
The Radio Times entry for ‘Congo Night’ described the play as: ‘A Short Melodrama written for Broadcasting by Richard Hughes. To get the right atmosphere for listening to this play, lights should be turned down and the play heard in darkness or by fire-light. It will then be easier to imagine the mysterious Congo night, the thick undergrowth, a small clearing, the young English traveller and his companions, a nervous young Cockney, a middle-aged African gold prospector, and also the intrepid girl who is chiefly concerned; these characters and the distant background of black tribesmen with the accompaniment of the threatening beat of the tom-toms and the wailing of the native war chant. Mr. Richard Hughes is a young Welsh story-writer and playwright who has done as much remarkable work as any other of the Georgians. His first book, ‘Gipsy Night and Other Poems,’ was published by the Golden Cockerel Press as recently as 1922. Since then he has written several notable plays, including ‘The Sisters’ Tragedy’ and ‘A Comedy of Good and Evil,’ which aroused peak interest when it was produced at the Ambassadors Theatre last year; as well as ‘A Moment of Time,’ a book of short stories, and ‘Confessio Juvenis.’ He was the author of ‘A Comedy of Danger,’ the first play written specially for broadcasting, which was given in January, 1924.’
On Saturday 23rd February 1929, the Birmingham Station 5GB produced for ‘BBC Daventry Experimental’ a series of ‘Three Studies in Terror’ between 9 and 10 p.m. and this included Danger by Richard Hughes. The director and producer was not credited in the Radio Times though the cast identified as Jack- Stuart Vinden; Mary- Vera Ashe and Mr Bax by George Worrall. The BBC has previously opened a high-power medium wave transmitter at the Daventry 5GB site to replace the existing local stations in the English Midlands on 21 August 1927. This allowed the experimental longwave transmitter 5XX to provide a service programmed from London for the majority of the population. This came to be called the National Programme.
Danger was produced again Wed 6th Aug 1930, 19:45 on the ‘Regional Programme from London’ and this production was by Howard Rose with a portrait of Richard in the The Radio Times. It would be broadcast again on the ‘National Programme’ the following day Thur 7th Aug 1930 at 21:40
Tue 26th Jan 1932, 19:20 on BBC’s 5WA Cardiff radio station. Danger produced and directed by Cyril Wood. This production featured the first illustration promoting Danger in The Radio Times.
Wed 4th Oct 1933, 21:00 on BBC Radio’s National Programme Daventry. Part of a season of ‘Twelve Plays for Broadcasting’. This production of ‘Comedy of Danger’ starred the famous film star and actor Jack Hawkins in the role of ‘Jack’ and was produced and directed by Robin Whitworth.
The Radio Times described the play as:
‘The first in a series of twelve weekly programmes of radio plays, designed to demonstrate the development of broadcast drama from its beginnings until today. “Danger” was first broadcast in January, 1925. It is a brief and very effective melodrama, set in a Welsh coal mine, notable as the first play specially written for the ‘blind ‘ radio audience. It is the work of Mr. Richard Hughes, best known as the author of a grim little play, “The Sisters’ Tragedy”, and a very successful novel, ‘High Wind in Jamaica.’ “Danger” will be followed by “The Wrong Bus”, in this series as the first example of radio drama dealing in the supernatural, a type of play that has often been broadcast with success. It was first broadcast in September, 1927.’
Learning On Screen has liaised with BBC programming archives and made available the surviving archive of the first one and a half minutes of the broadcast of Danger on 4th October 1933 with Jack Hawkins performing the role of the character Jack.
Twelve Plays for Broadcasting, 21:30 05/10/1933, London Regional, 40 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/RT2D63BC?bcast=117687333 (Accessed 18 Jan 2024)
The reading and broadcast of Richard Hughes’s short story ‘The Red Lantern’ first broadcast: Fri 25th May 1934, 22:35 on National Programme Daventry. View in Radio Times which explained:
‘The story chosen in this series tonight is by one of the most versatile of our younger writers. Poetry, novels, stories, plays both for. the theatre and the microphone come with equal facility from his pen. He is represented in Georgian poets,, and other anthologies ; his The Sisters’ Tragedy was performed both in London and New York, his Danger, broadcast in 1924, was the first play specially written for the purpose. But perhaps Richard Hughes is even better known for his novel, ‘A High Wind in Jamaica’, which was as big a success as it was well reviewed. It was set in the early days of steam navigation, and the adventures which some children had with real pirates were notable for the matter-of-fact attitude of the children. This imaginative phantasy, which did much to make the author’s reputation, contained remarkable descriptions of a tornado and an earthquake in Jamaica.’
The fifth radio play by Richard Hughes, We Gave Our Grandmother was broadcast two times in May 1937 first on the Regional Programme and then two days later on the National Programme.
Mon 3rd May 1937, 19:30 on Regional Programme London
Wed 5th May 1937, 21:20 on National Programme Daventry
The produced was directed and produced by Lance Sieveking with the following cast: Maureen Glynne, Angela Freedman, Mary Alexander, May Agate, Joan Batchelor, Eileen Easton Smith, Eric Anderson, Stanley Lathbury, Lilian Warde, Mona Harrison, Joyce Woderman, Pauline Peacy, Jean Winstanley, Muriel Pavlov, Allan Wade, Margot Sieveking, Noel Dryden and Robert Holland.
Mon 7th May 1956, 21:15 on BBC Radio Home Service Basic. Part of a Festival of Radio Drama with the plays introduced by Head of BBC Radio Drama Val Gielgud. This production of ‘Comedy of Danger’ was produced and directed by Frederick Bradnum and the Radio Times published its second illustration of the play.
This may be the origin of the sound extract online taken from a BBC Radio Collection CD of BBC History through archive extracts published around 1997.
The first transmission of a new production of Danger produced by Raymond Raikes. Mon 1st Oct 1973, 22:00 on BBC Radio 3. The Radio Times explained:
“The author was asked by the British Broadcasting Company (as it was then) in January 1924 to write a play for effect by sound only, in the same way that film plays at that time were written for effect by sight only: this play thus became the first ‘listening-play’, an experiment in a new medium which is now developing into stereophony. A wonderful feature of this production is that the character of Mr Bax is performed by the legendary BBC radio actor Carlton Hobbs- who in the 1950s and 1960s was the BBC’s radio Sherlock Holmes.
Learning On Screen in liaison with BBC programming archives has made available the archive of this broadcast for subscribers.
Drama, 22:00 01/10/1973, BBC Radio 3, 25 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/RT3AC508?bcast=119247304 (Accessed 18 Jan 2024)
Tue 15th Jan 1974, 21:30 on BBC Radio 3- part of a celebration of 50 years of radio drama and directed and produced by Raymond Raikes. (It was followed by a recording of ‘“How Listening Plays are Done.” Richard Hughes reads his article about “Danger” printed in the London Evening Standard the day after the first transmission of the play in 1924.’)
Sat 2nd Oct 1982, 14:05 on BBC Radio 4 FM. The first binaural and stereo production produced and directed by Richard Imison. [I am told this was the best ever radio production of the play- I wonder if it is still in the BBC sound archive. It would be marvellous to hear it again.]
Since then BBC Radio 4 Extra and BBC Sounds online has been transmitting and making available the 1973 Raymond Raikes production.
For Learning on Screen subscribers: Danger, 07:30 11/02/2023, BBC Radio 4 Extra, 20 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/3C08BA92?bcast=138341798 (Accessed 15 Jan 2024)
And, as we know on Sat 11th Feb 2023, 15:00 on BBC Radio 4 FM ‘To mark the centenary of this unique art form, poet Michael Symmons Roberts updates elements from Richard Hughes’ original radio play, for a drama set in an underground data bank.’ The 57 minute production has been available online.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001j3cq
For Learning on Screen subscribers: Danger 2023, 15:00 11/02/2023, BBC Radio 4, 60 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/3C08B780?bcast=138342998 (Accessed 07 Jan 2024)
Other BBC productions of note in respect of Richard Hughes:-
A Life Sentence: Richard Hughes (1900-1976) BBC Radio 3. First broadcast: Thu 8th Nov 1979, 20:05.
[The Radio Times wrongly gave the year of his death as 1978- it was in fact 1976]
‘During his life he wrote only four novels: A High Wind in Jamaica, In Hazard, A Fox in the Attic, and The Wooden Shepherdess, and it was a struggle to write them; yet he wrote the first-ever radio play, Danger, in a single night. Once he said, “After all, writing is a life sentence”. Make what you will of that. The programme is based on his own recordings and writings and the memories of his family and friends.
Readers Robert Lang and Peter Howell
Compiled and presented by Michael Bakewell followed by an interlude. Contributors. Presenter/Compiled by: Michael Bakewell. Readers: Robert Lang and Peter Howell;
Producer: Jane Morgan.’
Learning On Screen liaising with BBC programming archives have been able to make available one third of the surviving archive of this programme to subscribers.
A Life Sentence, 21:35 19/08/1982, BBC Radio 3, 75 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/RT3EBDF9?bcast=119637162 (Accessed 18 Jan 2024)
This was repeated by BBC Radio Three Thu 19th Aug 1982, 21:35.
Television. Sunday Cinema: A High Wind in Jamaica. BBC Two First broadcast: Sun 30th Apr 1978, 19:15 on BBC Two England starring Anthony Quinn , James Coburn
‘When the ship carrying the Thornton children to England from Jamaica is attacked by pirates, they find themselves launched into blood-curdling adventures on the high seas. Based on the novel by Richard Hughes , the film shows the ability of children to live unperturbed in a world of their own surrounded by danger and adult brutalities.’
Directed by Alexander Mackendrick.
The Author [description on the back cover of 1948 Penguin edition]
‘One of the most widely read books of the last few years was about the adventures of a family of children who are captured by a pirate schooner. It was called A High Wind in Jamaica; and with it the author, Richard Hughes, sprang from being a not very widely known poet into being one of the most famous of the younger novelists of to-day.
He has never actually been captured by pirates himself, but he has had almost every other kind of adventure you can imagine. Soon after leaving school he was crossing frontiers in disguise, carrying secret papers, in the Balkans. He has camped with Red Indians in the forests of Canada. He has sailed before the mast on a little sailing-vessel.
He has spent part of each year among the Arabs in Morocco, living their life and wearing their clothes, and it is there he has had many of his most exciting adventures. While he was working on a new book, he camped with his Arab friends for two months among the flowers in a glade in a cork-forest, with nothing to disturb him but nightingales and wild bear – until another party of unfriendly Arabs raided his camp!
All his life he has been fond of children, among whom he has many friends; and much of his time when in England he spends in their company. Above all, he never refuses, when asked, to ‘tell us a story’. He has written down some of these stories, in a book called The Spider’s Palace.
In 1932 he was married to Miss Frances Hazley of Hatherop Castle, Gloucestershire. He is thirty-seven years of age. His books, published by Chatto and Windus, are Confessio Juveinis (Poems), A Moment of TIme (stories), Plays, A High Wind in Jamaica (a novel), The Spider’s Palace (children’s stories), In Hazard (a sea story) 1938, and Don’t Blame Me! (children’s stories) 1940.’
About This Book (plot description by Penguin)
A family of five English children, three girls and two boys, were sent back from Jamaica to England on the sailing-ship Clorinda. In those days there were still pirate vessels on the high seas, and when stopped and boarded by one of these Captain Marpole, Master of Clorinda lost his head completely. In the despatch he subsequently sent on the affair he solemnly announced that, after looting his ship, the wicked pirates had carried the Thornton children off to their barque and done them to death. But his fanciful narrative proved very wide of the mark.
Aboard the pirate ship the Thornton children, in fact, had the time of their lives. Far from being the fearsome buccaneers of fiction the pirates turned out to be not very competent masters of their trade and rather fond of children. Their leader, Captain Jonsen, was a good-natured Dane and took very seriously the domestic duties imposed on him by the presence of the children and who did his best, indeed, but without success, to put them safetly ashore before continuing his voyage. Their accidental captivity proved a rollicking adventure, and when at last Captain Jonsen managed to deliver them back to civilisation they had learned many things not in the lesson-books.
No writer of our times excels Richard Hughes in telling so strange yet credible a tale, no one is more skilful in balancing realism and fantasy in an exciting story of adventure. This is the first apparance in Penguins of A High Wind in Jamaica and it is to be followed by his famous sea story, In Hazard.’
Three days after the first broadcast of Danger by the BBC’s 2LO London station, its author Richard Hughes was asked by the UK’s then largest circulation national liberal paper The Daily News to write an article on drama for the ear only. This may well be one of the first pieces of writing on the theory and practice of audio drama ever published in Britain by a playwright.
Hughes shows great philosphical insight on the fundamental differences of writing for sound as opposed to sight and how this can be appreciated by the listening audience. He talks about blinding the imagination and uses terms such as ‘The Unseen Drama” and ‘the listening-play.’
He makes fascinating observations and comparisons between sound play and sight play at a time cinema was a form of silent play, though he would have known and we all know now so-called ‘silent cinema’ was anything but that with accompanying music and theatrical effects and the use of reading subtitles. Hughes was theorizing before the age of the ‘Talkie.’
I would argue that this article has some significance in terms of the history of audio drama theory and very much merits consideration by radio historians.
‘Drama For The Ear Only’ by Richard Hughes in The Daily News 17th January 1924.
(Author of “Comedy of Danger,” specially written and broadcast last Tuesday. )
When I was asked to write a play for the B.B.C. I immediately saw that the difficulty would be to “blind” my imagination. Ordinarily, when writing a play, one sees with the mind’s eye and hears with the mind’s ear at the same time. One sees the action take place on an ideal and imaginary stage, and hears the speeches spoken with an ideal- and wholly imaginary- excellence of expression.
It is easy enough to shut the physical eye; to shut the mind’s eye is a far more difficult matter. So, in order to facilitate this, I decided to choose a scene which would actually take place in darkness. I chose an accident in a coal-mine; the lights are supposed to have gone out just before the action of the play begins, and all the effects are got by voices; the action had to be entirely suggested by the actual noises it made and its reaction on the speakers.
This seems very simple; but for a first experiment one has to be simple. Later on, the listening-play may find itself capable of just as complicated a story, just as many changes of scene and other effects as the cinema play. After all, in the early days of the film play, sceptics may well have said: “How can you expect to hold the attention of an audience simply by their eyes? It’s hard enough to hold them by eyes and ears both, as any theatrical producer knows.” And yet nowadays, the audiences at cinemas sit for hours, far longer than they would at a stage play.
It is true that the cinema makes use of sub-titles; but the tendency of the best films is to use them less and less; and in the end we may see them practically wiped out.
As far as expressiveness goes, the Unseen Drama can give points to its elder brother, the Silent Drama. Speech is the most perfect medium of expression ever invented; and in preserving the audible side of drama one is preserving an infinitely more valuable part than when one has nothing but the visible side. In fact, one of the drawbacks of the stage play is that the visible effects, which are so far harder to produce than the audible, often actually spoil the effectiveness of the latter. Consequently, from the author’s point of view at any rate, the listening-play is a far preferable medium to the film play. Every word he writes can be got over: he has nothing to fear from the stage-carpenter or the scene-painter, or, what is often far more dangerous, from the heroine’s face. You can’t try to be beautiful through a microphone.
And then again, think of the many actors and actresses with great skill and beautiful voices, whose stage career is spoilt because of the lack of good looks. Here is their chance. An actress may be ugly as sin; and yet, if she has a beautiful and winning voice, may become the darling of millions of British homes! From this point of view, the Unseen Drama will be an incalculable benefit.
With plays produced by collaboration between author and “Noises Man” we may hope to bring this mysterious new Unseen Stage into every house and cottage in the kingdom.’
As indicated earlier Richard Hughes was also asked by the Evening Standard to write an article on ‘How Wireless Plays are Done’ for the edition following the broadcast. When listeners-in fitted on their headphones, they had little idea of the scene going on in the BBC studio and Hughes said: ‘I hadn’t until I saw my play being rehearsed.
Imagine a long, empty room rather like a stage temple, with thick carpets and hangings on the walls and ceilings to deaden any possible echo. No furniture; only a thing in the middle like a heathen altar – the microphone. And brilliant electric light. And yet, in front of this strange altar stand three devotees, type-script in hand. You listen to what they are saying. They are complaining of the darkness!
Suddenly one of them, a girl, rushes to the end of the room, flings open the door, and screams out on the landing, then rushes back to her place. (If she screamed too close to the microphone, the fuses would blaze up.) A man, with no one near, cries out, “Let go, you’re throttling me” in a strangled voice. In an ante-chamber four men are singing hymns into lamp-glasses.
Outside on the stairs are Mr Van Dam’s Troop of Noises- and a very fine troop they are, with wind machines, water-machines, shot-guns, bricks, chisels, drums, sandpaper, etc. Inside, the three devotees on the comfortable Persian carpet start to complain that they are drowning. One of them stamps up and down a specially-prepared platform four feet long. Then one of them complains that he is being rescued. He seizes a bucket and shouts into it, gradually moving up stage. All the devotees seize buckets …Is this a savage ceremony or a Channel crossing?
And then someone steps forward and moves a little switch on the altar. It is over.
And yet, however frenzied and confused the scene in the studio, to the listener-in all is clear and simple. What he has heard is an accident in a coal-min, where three visitors to the mine are entombed; he has heard the explosion, and the flooding of the mine, and a party of miners in the next gallery singing hymns to keep up their courage, and the pickaxes of the rescue party who finally save them.
How does the microphone restore order to this higgledy-piggledy of sound? In the first place, sound has perspective as well as sight. Not only must the quality and volume of every sound be accurately guaged, but also its exact distance from the microphone. If you stand at the back of the studio, you get the perspective of sound in its wrong order, and it makes no sense. If you stand close to the microphone, it all sorts itself out and comes right.
But that is not the only difficulty. Some sounds that are all right when heard direct are no good when transmitted by the microphone. Mr Van Dam’s first attempts at a flood sounded splendid in the studio, but when I went to another part of the building and listened-in, they sounded like a shop window full of puppies. He had to experiment till it sounded just right.
Another thing that is very difficult is to get any sharp, metallic sound- the clash of swords, for instance. It sounds like a battle of broom-sticks. But these difficulties will be got over in time; and if Mr Nigel Playfair’s programme has demonstrated anything, it is that the “Listening Play,” the “Unseen Drama,” will become an art of its own, as separate from the stage-play as its elder brother, the film-play, has already become.’
These articles added to the frisson and excitement generating so much public awareness of the magic of sound plays now providing powerful entertainment in the relatively new medium of radio broadcasting. The genius, creativity and enthusiasm of a young Richard Hughes made such a huge contribution to audio drama’s future.
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The sisters’ tragedy : and three other plays was first published by W. Heinemann, London, 1924 and the three other plays were: The man born to be hanged ; A comedy of good and evil ; A comedy of danger. This volume was republished by Chatto and Windus in 1928 in ‘The Phoenix Library’ which included titles by Lytton Strachey, Aldous and Julian Hugley and Winnie the Pooh creator A.A. Milne.
The 1928 volume provided notes on the plays’ production history and Richard Hughes’s views on how they shoud be directed.
‘The Sisters’ Tragedy was first performed privately at the house of Mr John Masefield on Januay 24th 1922. The first public production opened in London at the Little Theatre on May 31st 1922. The Producer is asked to remember that thought it was played in the London Grand Guignol, this is not essentially a Grand Guignol play, and should not be acted in the Grand Guignol manner; and that unless it is well acted it will be a complete failure.’
‘A Comedy of Good and Evil. This Comedy was first performed for the Three Hundred Club in London at the Court Theatre on July 6th 1924. It was later produced at the Playhouse, Oxford, by Mr. J.B. Fagan, who brought it to London, where the first public performanced opened at the Ambassador’s Theatre on March 30th 1925.’
‘The Man Born to be Hanged was first performed in the original bill of the Portmadoc Players at Portmadoc : and afterwards in London by the same Company at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith on February 26th, 1924.’ [The official name of Portmadoc was changed to Porthmadog in 1974.]
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See the analysis of Danger by Professor Tim Crook in Writing Audio Drama (2023) in Chapter Two between pages 36 to 42.
See also the brilliant cultural and academic analysis of Danger in ‘Miners, Wales and the BBC Radio Drama Richard Hughes’s Danger’ by Professor Takeshi Kawashima in the academic journal ‘Journal of Radio & Audio Media.’ https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2022.2046584
Abstract: ‘This paper examines the radio drama Danger (1924) by Richard Hughes. Danger, which is known as the world’s first radio drama, was broadcast by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) in January 1924. The play’s importance is not limited to its pioneering role in creating the genre of radio drama. Danger is set in a Welsh coal mine, a backdrop that invokes the social issues engaging Britain in the 1920s. By pursuing these issues, I would like to examine this work’s mission as a public medium that appeals to the masses, as well as its innovation in drama broadcasting.’
Richard Hughes entry on Wikipedia
Richard Hughes literary estate and rights are managed by David Higham Associates
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