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 2023 following the publication of the printed book 31st March 2023. Many thanks for your patience and consideration.
The Radio Plays of Reginald Berkeley
Reginald Cheyne Berkeley (1890 – 1935) is one of the BBC’s most significant early radio playwrights.
He was awarded a Military Cross during his service as an infantry officer during the First World War, worked as a propagandist for the League of Nations, and then entered politics in Britain where he was the Liberal MP for Nottingham. He was a qualified barrister and successful stage playwright, screenplay writer and novelist.
He was invited to write ‘plays for the microphone’ by the BBC’s first Director of Drama Productions, R E Jeffrey. His credits were The Dweller in the Darkness, The White Château, and The Quest of Elizabeth.
The White Château broadcast on Armistice night 1925 was the first full length original play commission from a major playwright specially written for the BBC, the first such play to be published in book form and the first anti-war play broadcast and presented to such a wide audience of radio listeners- probably at least a million.
But Berkeley would be frequently engaged in censorship rows with BBC which was anxious to avoid broadcasting politically controversial material.
The political and emotional dimension to his writing often led to clashes with authority and certainly the BBC’s Managing Director John Reith.
The clash over the political content in his commissioned play Machines was public and embarrassing for the BBC. It would not be broadcast, though Berkeley published the script with the angry correspondence exchanged with the BBC over it, and it was produced in London Theatre Club venues.
Berkeley moved to Hollywood because of his demand as a screenplay writer, but sadly died in Los Angeles from pneumonia after an operation in 1935 at the age of 45.
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