RADIO PLAY DIRECTING: CHALLENGES OF THE BLINDMAN'S THEATRE THE PROS AND CONS: An Introduction
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RADIO PLAY DIRECTING: CHALLENGES OF THE BLINDMAN'S THEATRE
BY
AUSTINE LORDLAZDEPARTMENT OF THEATRE AND MEDIA STUDIES
UNIVESITY OF CALABAR
ABSTRACT
Radio play also known as Audio play, audio drama, audio theatre,
and radio Drama is an enacted dramatic piece(s) with the use of
voice and sound effects as medium of delivery and communication to
be broadcast on radio or captured in any media storage device.
overtime, the radio has provided for the entertainment, information
and education needs of a mass audience, penetrating boundaries and
reaching locals as a result of the medium's characteristics of
accessibility and affordability. Unlike the stage, TV and Film, a
radio drama lacks visuals. This is a major disadvantage of the
medium. Thus directing a play for the blind man's theatre (Radio)
poses a great challenge to the director who is charged with the
responsibility of making-up for the lacking visuals by using only a
production element - (sound) to create believable mental picture to
arrive at full "Radio-theatre experience". This paper therefore attempts
to x-ray challenges of directing a play for the Blind-man's
theatre. The summation is that when a radio play director is vested
with the required knowledge, understands the medium, acquires
technical know-how and keeps the elements of a radio play at his
finger tips, he is bound for success.
KEY WORDS: Radio play, directing, sound, sound effects
THE PROS AND CONS: An Introduction
Directing is a creative and interpretative art
that calls for versatility, imagination, ingenuity
and technical know-how. A director is an artist who
unifies the bits of a production into a single
aesthetic whole with the aim of satisfying the
entertainment, education and informational needs of a
given audience through the messages communicated via
the Actors on either the Stage, Radio, TV or Film. A
Theatre, Radio, TV or Film director conducts,
coordinates, supervises and manages the making of an
artistic production, guiding the cast and crew to
achieve a vision.
Supporting the attainment of vision, Robert
Wills defines the Art of play directing as the
process of transforming personal vision into public
performance (3). The transformation of personal
vision (script or director’s idea) into public
performance could be deduced to be through the stage,
Radio, TV or film medium.
Directing for these media is a herculean task
that demands first the understanding of each medium.
Thus a Director who wishes to direct for these media
should be schooled in the areas he or she wishes to
delve into. It is recommended that such acquaints
himself with the pros and cons of the medium – Stage,
Radio, TV or Film.
The Radio is a blind man’s theatre. It is deemed
so because of its single medium appeal. It is blind
in the sense that, with closed or blind eyes and open
and listening ears one is entertained, informed and
educated. No message is lost as long as the listening
ear is attentive, hears and decodes. The radio unlike
other media is restricted to the ears. It is purely
auditory. This characteristic therefore makes
directing a play for the Blind’ mans Theatre most
challenging. While the stage TV and Film media posses
visual enablement which aid effective realization of
intent through, colour, visible costume, light, make-
up, props, scenic units, amongst others, The radio is
restricted to dialogue and sound effects.
A radio play director is therefore charged with
the responsibility of delivering a full audio-theatre
experience to the audience ensuring adequate
communication and creating visuals through sound so
as to make up the deficiencies of the radio. It is on
the above premise that this paper is borne to x-ray
challenges of directing a play for the Blind man’s
theatre.
RADIO PLAY – The Emergence
The Roman playwright Seneca has been claimed as
a forerunner of radio Drama because his play were
performed by readers as sound plays, not by actors as
stage plays; but in this respect Seneca had no
significant successors until 20th century technology
made possible the wide spread dissemination of sound
play (Martin Briham 896).
Another source records that Radio Drama, traces
its roots back to the 1880s in 1881 French engineer
Clement Ader had filed a patent for improvements of
Telephone Equipment in Theatre – (Theatrophone)
English-Language radio drama seems to have started in
the United States. A rural line on Education, a brief
sketch specifically written for radio, aired on
Piltburgh’s KDKA in 1921. News paper accounts of the
era report on a number of other drama experiments by
America’s commercial radio stations. KYW broadcast a
season of complete Opras from Chicago starting in
November 1921. In February 1922, entire Broadway
Musical comedies with the originals aired from WJZ’s
Newark Studios. Actors Grace George and Herbert Hayes
performed an entire play from a San Francis co
station in the summer of 1922.
An important turning point in Radio drama came
when Schenectady, New York’s WGY, after a successful
tryout.
On August 3rd, 1922, began weekly broadcast of
full length stage plays in September 1922, using
music, sound effects and a regular troupe of Actors,
the WGY players. Aware of this series, the director
of Cincinnati WLW began regularly broadcasting one-
act (as well as excerpts from longer works) in
November. The success of these projects led to
imitators at other stations by the spring of 1923,
original dramatic pieces written specially for radio
were airing on station in Cincinnati (when love
wakens by WLW’s Fred Smith) Philadelphia (the secrete
wave by Clyde A. Criswell) and Los Ageles (At home
over KHJ) that same year, WLW (in May) and WGY (in
September) sponsored scripting contests, inviting
listeners to create original plays to be performed by
those stations’ dramatic troupes.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-Drama.
THE RADIO AND RADIO PLAY: Nature And Medium
The Radio is a wireless medium of transmission
and communication to a mass audience. It is one of
the most effective medium of mass communication ever
invented. According to Joe King, Radio is clearly one
of the most popular medium in the sense that it
reaches more people quicker, more often through the
strength of constancy and of running critique of the
medium. (1)
The Radio is accessible in both rural and urban
communities. There is hardly any home without a
radio. Technological developments have added
sophistication of the mobile characteristic of the
medium by making the radio more handy and assessable.
Thus the radio can even be seen in digital pen, flash
drives, MP3, Ipad, Cellular phones, amongst other
digital drives. A mass audience could be reached at
the same time irrespective of the location.
The radio caters for the entertainment,
information, education needs of both the reach and
the poor with myriad of designed programmes ranging
from News, Documentaries, talk-shows, requests,
sports, religious, comedy, people and business, drama
amongst others. Each of these programs has different
approach, technique and design in production. Amongst
them, Radio drama is one with enormous task on the
part of the director.
Radio play also referred to as Radio drama, audio
play, audio drama and some times radio theatre is an
enacted dramatic piece(s) with the use of voice and
sound effects as medium of delivery and communication
to be broadcast on radio or captured in any media
storage device.
An online article extends this thought:
It is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance broadcast
on radio or published on audio medium such as tape or
C.D. With no visual component, radio drama depends on
dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener
imagine the characters and story.
(www.wikipedia .org/wiki/Radio drama)
Tim Crook in his book Radio Drama: Theory and
Practice, Corroborates the auditory characteristic of
the radio drama thus:
“It is auditory in the physical dimension
but equally powerful as a visual force in
the physical dimension”. (87)
Through the sound (dialogue and effects) the
listener of the radio is able to create mental
picture of what he hears. He transforms the sound
into visuals for better understanding. This
transformation is only possible if the director
injects enough sound aesthetic which could aid the
listener to absorb what he hears and make sense from
imaginary visuals.
RADIO PLAY DIRECTING: procedure and challenges
Radio play like a stage play, TV drama/novella ,
and films begins with first an idea. This idea is THE
SCRIPT which brings the director and other production
units to work. A script is a written document of
drama with created dialogue, actions and characters
who execute them. Microsoft Encarta dictionary gives
a deeper insight of a script as:
“The printed version of a stage play,
Movie screenplay, or radio or television
broadcast including the words to be spoken
and often also technical directions”. (2008
version)
The script is the brain-child of a playwright
which is later left in the hands of a director to
give life and meaning. Be it for the Radio, Tv, Film
or Stage, the Director commences his creative process
first, by embarking on a thorough analysis of the
script. This determines his understanding of the
script and the success of such procedure is
inevitable as he is face with the challenge of
conveying meaning to the audience through a single
production element “sound”. Thus a radio play
director begins his art by analysis in order to
understanding hidden meanings and imageries imbedded
in the script. Effiong Johnson elaborates on
understanding the script.
…understanding is a directors coming to
terms with both the direct and implied,
textual and sub-textual, denotative and
connotative meanings of the script.
Understanding includes philosophy or
ideology, religion or belief(s) movement and
the genre of the script (1)
When the radio play director acquaints himself with
the world of the play by being familiar with the
covert and overt meanings of the script's
composition, he proceed to the next stage –
Audition and Casting: The audition process is where
the director scouts through, examining the different
“talents” (Actors) available with personalities
traits which could fit into the created characters on
the script. Unlike the stage, Tv and Film, the
audition for radio actors takes a different dimension
since it is purely audio. The director auditions for
voice Actors – those Talents whose voices could
possibly pass for the role. The director at this
stage needs to be tactful and careful in other not to
select and cast Actors whose voices are similar. If
this factor is not well checked during casting, the
director may run into the problem of having voices
that are same and it becomes difficult to different
between the two characters when they speak.
Once the casting is completed, THE REHEARSAL
process sets in. The Rehearsal is the preparatory
stage of the production where the director takes the
Actors through the demands of the script. The
Director “Blocks” them for the radio recording. Actor
Acquaint themselves with the world and lives of the
script and gets ready for recording. The blocking on
radio play differs from the blocking in other media.
In radio the actors are meant to understand off mic
(s) and on mic(s); proximities (which in the TV and
film signifies) close up, medium, long etc.
Rehearsing for the radio play could take minimal
number of days than in other media. This is so
because, actors may be allowed to go recording with
their script. Nancy Prince and Jeanie Jackson write
on the duration of rehearsal:
“How much rehearsal time needed will depend
on the abilities of the actors the length of
the play, and the difficulty of the play”.
(177)
Immediately after this stage comes the TECHNICAL
PHASE where a Mock recording could be done to
ascertain possibilities and deficiencies. Characters
are thought by the director how to flip the script
without making muffling noise with it, positions and
distances, kill of dead air, how to flow without
making a mistake obvious amongst others.
RECORDING PROPER:
Recording a radio play is like the performance
proper for the stage and principal photography for
TV and film. Recording here is the act of making a
permanent or retrievable copy of sounds. In this case
the sound and dialogue of the Actors. Here, what was
rehearsed is brought to the studio. A radio play
director should be cautious and sensitive to
environment. He must know what to record in the
studio and outside the studio. He needs to have
variety in ambience sound. Exterior scene would give
better fill and ambience effect true to nature if
recorded outside. For example, in the recording of
the radio drama serial “Linda’s joint for Wildlife
conservations society, the director Liwhu Betiang and
other crew decided to map out scenes that have
interior ambience like Town council, Palace, and
exterior - Forest and an open joint. The different
scenes were recorded as the environment demanded,
thus different locations, which would give fill of a
drinking joint, market and forest were taken to such
places.
In recording the director sits with the sound
engineer with a head plug or he hears the out put
from the feedback speaker if they are in the studio.
An assistant director stands closer to the Actors to
ensure Actors maintain adequate (proximity) closeness
and distances from the microphone. He ensures that
the actors are on cue on time. The assistant director
takes instruction from the director on “takes and
repeat takes”. A sequence call of scenes and episode
must be made to differentiate scenes and also aid
post production. while recording the director and
assistant director ensures that sound effects that
could be achieved during recording is adequately
included. E.g if actors are suppose to drink, clink
glasses, eat, muffle pares count money, break
glasses, such effects which could easily be realized
must be included in other not to run into
difficulties of planting already made south effect
with many sound totally alien and may not be in
harmony with actors actions and lines.
THE POST PRODUCTION is the final phase before
broadcast. Here the bits and pieces of the recorded
drama are put together through a process called
editing. Bad takes, noise, unnecessary and unwanted
bits are removed, sound effects and music which may
help the plot is added. Post production is not for
the Editor alone. The director must ensure his
presence to know what to pick and what to drop.
After a first cut of the drama, a preview copy is
presented to the director to hear and spot errors for
correction. When this is done, the Radio play is
ready for broadcast.
RADIO PLAY: The Elements And The Director
In radio play directing, a director has salient
elements of the medium to consider. The management of
these elements will either make or mar the entire
radio play production. This elements include;
Narration, music, dialogue and sound effect. These
elements are arrived at as a result of the medium’s
lack of visuals. Thus the director must be able to
make-up the lacking visuals with the outlined
elements above.
Narration: Through narration, an sight is given about
the radio drama. Also, narration is the only way the
Casts and crew could be acknowledged and credited for
roles and functions like opening credit and end
credit. A radio play director must consider this for
success.
A post on slideshare.net on radio drama refers
to the shadow (A radio drama) which ran from 1937 to
1954 as one of the early radio plays that employed
narration to lay down the ground for the show.
Slideshare.net/mobile/mrs-bauerart/history-of-radio-dramas
Dialogue: Often referred to as language or diction,
is the only medium characters use to communicate. Its
function in radio drama cannot be over emphasized as
it is pivotal to the success of the production.
Through the dialogue or language characters give
information, reveal characters, expose theme of the
play, establish level of reality, tempo and rhythm of
the play. The director should know that it is through
this that the characters can be identified. Thus to
establish characters, there name must be mentioned in
the dialogue, repeatedly for clearer mental picture
of who is speaking and is been spoken to.
Music
Music is another element of Radio Drama that the
director needs to consider. Its role is pivotal as it
helps create mood, furthers the plot. Music gives
insight to the theme of the play. The radio drama
director must as a matter of fact have good ears for
music, know genres of music and kinds that could best
be injected into the play at any given time. The
music injected should help in actualizing the
aesthetic of the radio play. The music should be able
to deepen the play and aid the listener to understand
and appreciate the play.
Through music, transitions are made to establish
the beginning and end of a scene it also enable
mental visualization of the play and scenes.
SOUND EFFECTS
Often noted as (SFX) they are effects (natural
or created) to depict environment of the play. Sound
effects like music also deeps the understanding and
appreciation of the radio play. They may come in the
forms of clinking glass, vehicle sound, raving
engine, dogs barking, cricket sounds, cockcrow, foot
steps, door slams, bell amongst others.
All the effects generated enhance the realistic mood
of the radio drama. Therefore a director should
develop mastery of these elements to successfully
deliver a radio play.
ENSURING DELIVERY: A Conclusion
Directing a play for the blind mans theatre is an
endeavor that posses a great challenge for the
director. This challenge could be summarized as
ensuring delivery. The director of a radio play must
master the medium and understand that he only can use
sound and sound alone to create pictures which the
audience must understand and read without stress or
strains. The director must therefore equip himself
with the elements of the medium avoid use of product
brand names (Eva water, Maltina, Star), fowl
languages and direct names of public figures. This is
to avoid for the former, extra charges for
advertising brand names, and the later, safety and
securities reasons.
Thus when a radio play director is equipped with
the above knowledge and technical know-how, he would
arrive at a radio play worthy of broadcast and
ensuring an audio-theatre experience.
WORK CITED
Johnson, Effiong (2003): Visions Towards a Mission: The Art ofInterpretative directing. Lagos, Concepts publicationlimited.
Johnson, Effiong (2013): Script Understanding Analysis andInterpretation for performance. Cape Coast, Universityof Cape Coast Press.
King Joe (1995): A producer’s Guide to Radio, TV and Filmproduction techniques. Calabar Juh crow pub Ltd.
Prince Nancy and Jackson Jeane (1997): Exploring theatre;(mimmeapolrs 1st Paul, New York, Los Angeles, SamFrancisco) West publishing company.
Wills, Robert (1976): The Director in a changing Theatre.California: Mayfield publishing company.
Slideshare.net/mobile/mrs-bauerart/history-of-radio-dramas
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-Drama.
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