Audio drama is sadly no more on our poor Aunty. The passing was a little while back, but I mention it now because I am teaching audio drama writing at the moment and have had to work my way gently around ‘hey, we want you to write this, and this is where you would have sent it if it was still around…’ But it isn’t. Aunty has made great strides in her embrace of new platforms and sadly has had to do so with little enhancement of the fiscal kind, so I guess something had to go.  And of course we all know what a massive drain on resources producing the odd radio play was…

But this is not so much a whinge as a repositioning of focus.  I thought if I did a web search I might find the odd remnant of a skerrick of a snippet to play to my classes, but what I found instead was a massive community of clever committed people who are making audio drama and putting it online. It’s the independent theatre of the air, and it’s up there.  Here’s a good place to start for a look:

http://www.finalrune.com/day-of-the-dead/

This is a really clever take on the Orpheus myth, set in New Orleans. We listened to a little of this in class, and I got students into groups to come up with their own versions of this universal myth. They all did the usual ‘what the fuck does he want us to do again?’ group eye-contact round the table, but then got into it. What they came up with was the beginnings of thinking in audio.  Then a truly heartening moment – a student came up to me at the end and asked if it was okay to submit his final script with a completed recording attached? Damn right – vale ABC Audio Arts and Hello doing it ourselves.

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3 Responses to Audio Drama – Vale and Hello

  1. Fred says:

    So thrilled to hear that our little productions from Maine are making it all the way to Australia! With millions (billions?) of listening devices out there in everyone’s pockets, it seems like a listening-entertainment renaissance should be here. On-demand, original programming for mobile listeners, though the bigger broadcasters don’t seem to be interested in fostering it.

    Luckily, thanks to declining equipment costs, cheap/free distribution, and growing listeners, the prospects for independent audio drama are quite good and there is a growing international base of producers thrilled to be working in this medium.

    Thanks again for the feature.

    – Fred

  2. Dan says:

    Bit of a plug, but some of us are trying to keep audio drama going as Fred says.

    Check out our very own Action Science Theatre.

    • Patrick says:

      Thanks Dan,
      Great to hear from you. I’m developing a research project on radio drama, so I’ll be trying to plug into the network over the next few months,
      regards
      Patrick

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