Radio drama

Radio drama is a form of drama which is intended for broadcast on radio.

With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the story.

Radio drama had its greatest popularity in most countries before the spread of television in the 1950s. As of 2006, radio drama has a very minimal presence in the United States (often restricted to rebroadcasts of programs from previous decades), but other nations still have thriving traditions of radio drama: the BBC, for example, produces and broadcasts dozens of new radio dramas per year.

The terms audio drama or audio theater have been used in recent years to describe dramas which have been produced and marketed (usually to specialty audiences) without ever being broadcast on radio.

History

Often considered the first radio drama is Danger by Richard Hughes, broadcast by the BBC on 15 January 1924.

In 1951, writer and producer Arch Oboler suggested that Wyllis Cooper's Lights Out was the first "true" radio drama, writing, "Radio drama (as distinguished from theatre plays boiled down to kilocycle size) began at midnight, in the middle thirties, on one of the upper floors of Chicago's Merchandise Mart. The pappy was a rotund writer by the name of Willys Cooper."[1] Oboloer's suggestion deserves consideration: though often remembered solely for its gruesome stories and sound effects, Lights Out did in fact offer some innovations rarely if ever heard before in radio, including stream of consciousness monologues and scripts that contrasted a duplicitious character's internal monolog and his spoken words.

Perhaps the most famous radio drama is Orson Welles's 1938 radio version of The War of the Worlds, which convinced large numbers of listeners that an actual invasion from Mars was taking place.

By the late 1930s, radio drama was widely popular in the United States (and also in other parts of the world). There were dozens of programs in many different genres, from mysteries and thrillers, to soap operas and comedies. There were occasional efforts at more "literary" works, such as Under Milk Wood (1954) a 'Play for Voices' by Dylan Thomas. Many playwrights, screenwriters and novelists got their start in radio drama, including Caryl Churchill, Rod Serling, Irwin Shaw and Tom Stoppard.

Many recordings of radio progams survive, and are often collected by fans.

By the mid-1950s in the United States, television had acheived massive popularity, and radio drama was on the decline. Some successful radio programs were able to make a transition to televison (Gunsmoke and Dragnet being two examples). Radoi drama from the mid-1950s or before are now often called old time radio.

Radio drama today

Radio drama remains popular in much of the world. Stations producing radio drama often commission a large number of scripts. The relatively low cost of producing a radio play enables them to take chances with works by unknown writers. Radio can be a good training ground for beginning drama writers as the words written form a much greater part of the finished product; bad lines cannot be obscured with stage business.

The lack of visuals also enable fantastical settings and effects to be used in radio plays where the cost would be prohibitive in a visual medium. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was first produced as radio drama, and was not adapted for television until much later, when its popularity would ensure an appropriate return for the high cost of the futuristic setting.

On occasion television series can be revived as radio series. For example, a long-running but no longer popular television series can be continued as a radio series because the reduced production costs make it cost-effective with a much smaller audience. When an organisation owns both television and radio channels, such as the BBC, the fact that no royalties have to be paid makes this even more attractive. Radio revivals can also use actors reprising their television roles even after decades as they still sound roughly the same. Series that have had this treatment include Doctor Who, Dad's Army, Sapphire & Steel, The Tomorrow People, and Thunderbirds.

Radio dramas can be regularly heard on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Radio 1), on RTÉ in Ireland, and the BBC's Radio 4, Radio 3 and BBC 7. Radio 4 in particular is noted for its radio drama, broadcasting hundreds of one-off plays per year in strands such as The Afternoon Play, in addition to serials and soap operas such as The Archers. The British commercial station Oneword, though broadcasting mostly book readings, also transmits a number of radio plays in installments.

Radio drama can also be found on ACB radio produced by the American Council of the Blind and on XM Radio. The networks sometime sell transcripts of their shows on cassette tapes or CDs or make the shows available for listening or downloading over the Internet. Transcription recordings of many pre-television shows have been preserved. They are collected, re-recorded onto audio CDs and/or MP3 files and traded by hobbyists today as old-time radio programs.

With 21st-century technology, modern radio drama, also known as audio theater, has begun an exciting new movement. Local radio drama groups such as Crazy Dog Audio Theatre (from Ireland), Texas Radio Theatre, and FreeQuincy Radio Theater (from Wisconsin) have kept the spirit of radio drama alive. Not From Space from Borgus Productions was the first national radio play recorded exclusively through the Internet in which the voice actors were all in separate locations. As the podcasting phenomenon continues to grow, radio drama has found a new lease of life on the internet with specialist sites such as Dramapod.com becoming popular. Podcasting provides a good alternative to mainstream television and radio because it has no restrictions in regards to content or political content (as is evidenced by the ever growing Radio Onslaught).

Audio drama released directly to CD or cassette tape rather than ever being broadcast is a related format to radio drama. The advent of Podcasting has also brought a new renaissance in audio dramas. In July of 2006, Podshow released the first professionally produced podcast audio mystery series Shadow Falls.

Radio drama/audio drama in Japan

In Japan, the history of Radio Drama is started with the first radio broadcast in 1925. Some consider the first radio drama Japan to be "" which was a radio broadcast of a stage play. Others consider the Japanese translation of Richard Hughes's "Danger" or to be the first true radio drama to be broadcast in Japan. The Japanese equivalent of the BBC, NHK, also had a training the special radio drama theatrical company, this was the origin of the Seiyū phenomenon in Japan that continues to this day.

In the 1950's, authors like , , and others who belonged to the " penned many experimental radio dramas. These radio dramas caught the attention of various Eastern European countries in which the works of Nakamura et al. were translated and rebroadcast. As with most countries, radio drama broadcasts have become less common after the advent of television.

In Japan today, it is common for popular television dramas, "Light novels", manga series, anime series or video games to have main plot lines, plot continuations, sequels or small side stories released in the form of audio dramas.

These audio dramas are alternativly called drama CD's (ドラマCD), radio dramas (ラジオドラマ), or sound dramas (サウンドドラマ).

Nowadays they're released on Compact Disc, however in the past they were released on vinyl and audio cassette.) Before the advent of Videocassette recorders drama recordings were the only way to revisit an animated television series without and recordings often featured recaps of plotlines along with theme songs from anime series. This is still employed by current audio dramas, for example the first Sailor Moon audio drama CD has the characters getting into a shiritori battle with Zoisite featuring the names of minor characters and place settings. [2]

Audio dramas plot lines may also be re-used in other media. An example of this are audio dramas like Benitokage from Sakura Taisen which was later produced as a stage show; then used as a basis for an episode in direct-to-video anime release.

Most modern audio dramas consist of either side stories or parody stories, though an audio drama may be both. Side stories are usually extensions of main plotlines such as plotlines that were featured in manga that have not appearead in an anime. Parody stories feature characters getting in to humorous predicaments or scenes that may be too risqué for television. For example, one Sailor Moon audio drama featured a scene where Haruka Tennou filled in at a gay bar.

Recent trends in merchandising anime shows have had audio dramas come out as pretexts for the development of anime series and can substantially precede the appearance of an anime version. Sometimes they are released before an animated version of an anime series in order to introduce fans to the characters and Seiyū. (An example of this was the manga series Angel Sanctuary which had a drama CD come out well before its anime release.)

Also see Radio Drama article on Japanese Wikipedia

Programs/series

Adventures in Odyssey
Amos 'n' Andy
The Archers
The Black Mass
CBS Radio Mystery Theater
City of Dreams (Internet stream at Scifi.com)
Dimension X; later X Minus One
Earplay
Escape
The General Mills Radio Adventure Theater; later CBS Radio Adventure Theater
The Goon Show
The Green Hornet
Gunsmoke
Inner Sanctum Mysteries
*Jane Arden
The Life of Riley
Land of the Lost
Lights Out
The Lone Ranger
The Lord of the Rings (BBC radio version)
Lum and Abner
Lux Radio Theater
Mercury Theatre On The Air
The National Radio Theater of Chicago
The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
*Nick Danger; see also Firesign Theater, Dear Friends
Not From Space
NPR Playhouse
*Paul Temple
Quiet Please
Sears Radio Theater; later Mutual Radio Theater
Star Wars
The Shadow
Suspense
The Twilight Zone
Unshackled
Shadow Falls

See also

* Amateur voice acting
* Audio theatre
* Books on the radio
* BBC Radio 4
* BBC 7
* Old-time radio
* Oneword
* Radio comedy
* Radio programming
* Soap opera
* Sound effects
* ZBS

External links

* Audiocinema.com - This organization turns screenplays that were semifinalists in different competitions into audio dramas.
* An Interactive Radio Play Game - Powered by Clipstream
* Atlanta Radio Theater Company - adaptations of classic stories, including authorized adaptations from Robert A. Heinlein and H.P. Lovecraft
* Audio Theater.com - Information on who is working in the medium now and resources for those who want to get started.
* BBC Radio 4 drama page
* BBC Radio 3 drama page
* BBC 7 drama page
* BBC World Service Play of the Week (RealAudio streaming)
* CBC radio drama home page
* Darker Projects Audio Theater in a Darker Shade - original productions (Night Terrors, The Falcon Banner, Alive Inside, et. al.) and fan fiction productions including Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Quantum Leap. Available via download or as PodCast.
* Epguides UK radio show episode guide
* Graymatters Old Time Radio Streaming Links Web Page
* Icebox Radio TheaterLive, original radio theater from the Icebox of the Nation, International Falls, Minnesota.
* The Live365 netstation hub has many stations that broadcast the old-time radio dramas.
* Mercury Theatre on the Air website provides most of the famous Orson Welles radio dramas in RealAudio and MP3.
* The Middlebury Radio Theater of Thrills and Suspense - Classic radio scripts as well as original material written and performed by students of Middlebury College
* Northwestern University Radio Drama - features classic and contemporary scripts written by students of Northwestern University
* Offramp - improvised radio theatre
* The One Act Players: Award winning full cast productions of modern and classic audio drama, mystery, horror and comedy.
* Pendant Productions - original, full-cast audio dramas featuring Superman: The Last Son of Krypton, Batman: The Ace of Detectives, Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira, Star Trek: Defiant, James Bond and more to come, including Indiana Jones. Available for free download in .mp3 format and as Podcasts.
* DaveFilms Digital Media - Orginal, Audio theater produced with a full cast of actors. Mystery, Horror and drama. Forever Night(TM) Multi-genure series. Podcasts.
* Perdition City web audio drama.
* Shadow Falls - Podshow's original audio mystery series.
* Radio Onslaught - Exciting original audio drama and comedy featuring cutting edge themes.
* Radio drama and Audio Books
* Radio drama and literature webcast listings
* The Radio Time Machine
* Ruyasonic - a great comprehensive web site with info about writing for radio, sound effect tips, music guidelines. Also, there's a really nice Word script template available.
* RTÉ Radio 1 Drama
* Seeing Ear Theatre provides MP3 files of contemporary dramas on a science-fiction theme.
* The Sonic Society Highlighting modern audio drama around the world. Radio and Podcast
* Sonic Theater
* Soundstage -- radio theatre from WMNF in Tampa
* Texas Radio Theatre Company modern audio theater group based in the Dallas / Fort Worth Area. Live performances and broadcasts on KNTU-FM, Denton
* Zoot Radio -- incredibly extensive archive of old radio dramas.
* Dramapod.com Audio Drama Podcast Directory -- Find new audio drama podcasts