Journalism and Communication.: RADIO DRAMA

Writing a radio play is about painting a picture with words and sounds.

The Meaning of Drama The English word “drama” derives from the Greek word “dran” meaning “to do.” Thus, a drama is a story performed or “done” by actors on stage, radio, film, television, in an open field, or even on the street.

Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story.”

n the 1940s, all the way to the 1950s, radio was the major popular entertainment. It was more than just a source of news: music and novels were also a major part of people’s everyday lives.

The first play written specifically for radio was A Comedy Of Danger, by Richard Hughes, which aired in January of 1924, commissioned by the BBC in Britain.

In the U.S., it is believed that the first radio drama was a show called The Wolf, adapted from a play of Charles Sommerville by Eugene Walter, also in 1924.

But radio dramas have their roots set in another type of broadcasting, way before the technology for radio was developed. Between 1900 and 1920 people used a network of lines to listen to live performances – this was called the théàtrophone.

Radio Theatre, the performance art of combining voice talent, sound effects, and music before live studio and broadcast audiences, was popular during the Golden Age of radio (1930 to 1950)

Drama, to some extent, shares the same qualities as other literary forms that tell a story. Every playwright, like every novelist, has a story to unfold. But the manner and method adopted is depending on the medium through which it is presented. The writer of the short story cannot resort to the lengthy manner chosen by the novelist. Nor can @e dramatist adopt the technique used by the novelist or the short story writer. Nevertheless, they all have one purpose-to tell a story.

Define audience

As a writer we need to decide who our audience will be and what our intention is.

For example do you want to:

make your audience laugh?
comment on a current or historical event?
tell a story?
convey a message?

Elements of radio drama

The elements of radio drama are the same as those of stage drama:

role: characters in the play
time: when the action takes place
place: where the action takes place
action: what happens in the drama
tension: conflict within and between characters and their environment
focus: the ideas, feelings, or characters that the playwright wants us to concentrate on in a particular moment.

Character

A radio play generally has fewer characters than a staged play. It can difficult for an audience to distinguish between a number of characters by voice alone. The audience learns about the characters through what they say and what others say about them, and the sound of their voice. Characters have to have distinctive voices.

The audience needs to be able to tell one character from another. The character's voice needs to tell us a range of information about the character, for instance their age, ethnicity, social background and what they think and feel about the events in the play.

All good drama makes a connection with its audience. This can be achieved with a sympathetic character or by using a situation that is familiar to the audience.

Radio play needs special treatment both in scripting and presentation. Unlike the stage play (or TV play), 4hich has the visual props to support it, Radio play is totally dependent on the audio actor.

Dialogue

Dialogue is essential to define sounds heard in a radio play. A listener might interpret a sound in a number of different ways, unless there is dialogue from the characters to set the scene.

Writing dialogue for a script is different from writing prose. The words need to sound the way people speak.

The words that a character uses will tell the listener about the character's background. This sort of information might be shown by costume on stage. It is important to think about what we want the audience to know about a character, and the kind of language that the character would use that would give us this information, and how it might change in the play.

Action

As the audience cannot see what is happening on stage, you need to tell them. Characters need to describe what they are doing, or to describe what they can see others doing.

Radio play scenes tend to be shorter than stage play scenes. This is because radio plays tend to be shorter than stage plays and because radio plays do not have as many pauses in the dialogue for action.

Time and place

As there is no set to show the audience where the action will take place, a radio scriptwriter must create a picture for the listener using a combination of music, sound effects, and dialogue. Characters may need to talk about where they are and what they can see more frequently than in a stage play. Time and time that you choose and change location quickly and easily using words and sound. By using sound effects it is possible to evoke time of day, season, location, and era.

Tension

Tension can be developed by using silence, changing the length of scenes, locations, and the use of music as well as the events in the play. Dialogue can be faster or slower.

ELEMENTS DF A RADIO PLAY

Sound ~ Your play will be heard by hundreds of people and not seen as people who flock to the theatre. You are denied the techniques available to the stage director, namely, costumes, set designs, lights, properties and the physid appearance of the actors. The radio dramatist has to work with dialogue, music and bund effects and sometimes even silence, to create pictures in the minds of the listener.