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Radio drama

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Radio drama (or audio drama, audio theater), which had its greatest popularity in most countries before the spread of television, depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the story in his "mind's eye". In the television era, some audio drama has been produced and marketed that owes much to radio drama, without ever being broadcast on radio.

Contents

Scriptwriters

Among the most famous radio dramas are Under Milk Wood, a 'Play for Voices' by Dylan Thomas, and 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. Often considered the first radio drama is Danger by Richard Hughes, broadcast by the BBC on 15 January 1924. Many playwrights, screenwriters and novelists got their start in radio drama, including Caryl Churchill, Rod Serling, Irwin Shaw and Tom Stoppard.

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 is a good training medium for 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 instalments.

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 podcating 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.

Radio drama/audio drama in Japan

History

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 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.

Audio drama

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. [link]

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 substantually 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 direct-to-video anime release.)

References

Programs/series

See also

External links

 

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