Analysing radio drama (academic)
| We combine two university disciplinary ways of looking at radio plays and radio - from HUMANITIES and from the SOCIAL SCIENCES. |
| (From Humanities) close analysis of the text, quality judgement on the text (aesthetics), analysis of acting, directing and radio's scenography, techniques of production (formalist aspects). |
| (From the Social Sciences - media studies and cultural studies) reception (by an audience), and the political economy approach (broadcasting institutions - who made this broadcast and why), and ideological deconstruction. See commodification. |
| What are the aesthetic (aesthetics), economic, institutional and narrative requirements of this radio play under analysis? |
| What is the ability of the director and the playwright and the actors to pull the audience into a story, and get them involved with the narrative and characters? |
| What vocabulary do you need to build up for analysing these sound pictures? We can use some terms from film and visual images - such as colours, contrast, texture, focus, perspective - but beware of crude visualism (importing inappropriate visual terminology). |
Divide into these big areas :
| text - context |
| formalism - techniques - production - post-production |
| reception (by an audience) |
| political economy approach (broadcasting institutions) |
| ideological deconstruction |
Further:
| · CONTEXT AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY APPROACH: the socio-historical background to the radio play, economic and political factors that conditioned its making and explain its existence - mostly the B.B.C. or independent production company commissioned by the B.B.C. |
| · INTERTEXTUALITY AND GENRE: the traditions out of which a given radio play arises - the sorts of cultural quotations it partakes of, the conventions it makes use of, the degree to which it participates in certain specifically national patterns of expression |
| · FORMALIST ASPECTS (see above) |
| · POLITICAL ECONOMY APPROACH: the institutional positioning of a given radio play, its status in the public sphere in which it is received |
| · OEUVRE: the director and playwright's larger body of work, of which the radio play is part of a larger whole |
| · TEXT, CONTEXT AND REPRESENTATION OF THE LIFEWORLD: the "work" of the text itself, never forgetting, though, that radio plays issue from a larger extra-radio world |
| · RECEPTION: the question of a radio play's reception if it is a one-off broadcast (as the BBC Afternoon Play mostly), or if it is a classic (as 'Under Milk Wood' by Dylan Thomas), its reception across time and how this has pre-shaped our own expectations as well as the radio play's place in history |
| · INTERTEXTUALITY: the relation of a text to certain intertexts; these can be directly suggested by a radio play or they can be creative associations suggested by the listener. |
Taking the radio play apart
We take the radio play apart into: narrative, characterisation, scenography ('mise en scène'), dialogue, audiences, production in the studio or on location, post-production
| THREE PHASES OF PRODUCTION |
| text |
| genre and Types of plays |
| Different voices in a text - discourses |
| authorship and oeuvre |
| Context |
| |
| standard production |
| plot |
| NARRATIVE-NARRATION |
| Taking a scene apart |
| CHARACTERISATION |
| DIRECTING THE ACTOR |
| |
SCENOGRAPHY or designing the 'scenery' PERSPECTIVE Space and acoustics SOUND CENTRE production in the studio or on location USE OF SYMBOL SYSTEM THROUGH THE PLAY audiences (reception) Philosophy approaches - especially phenomenology
See books on analysing stage plays:
Wallis, Mick, and Shepherd, Simon, Studying Plays, 1998, London: Arnold
