Tag: entertainment

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The Charm of Audio Drama

While almost every radio station can be accessed online these days, one of my favourite purchases from the last five years is a pocket DAB+ radio. I find it freeing to use a standalone device with few distractions that doesn’t use much battery.

That first radio was made by Pure, but it stopped charging some time ago. A local repair shop was physically unable to remove the cover, while the manufacturer declined to make an out-of-warranty repair. As such, I bought a refurbished one made by Majority. I hadn’t heard of this brand before, but it’s just as good as any other I’ve used.

I typically listen to BBC stations, particularly Radio 1, even though I’m more than a decade older than their target demographic. The attraction is that most contemporary music is upbeat, and I’ve found it increasingly difficult to listen to slow music over the last few years.

But I don’t want to focus on music output in this entry. I’m here to talk about speech. The corporation is a leading producer and broadcaster of scripted audio drama. Most of its output can be found on BBC Radio 4 Extra, sandwiched between comedy and occasionally poetry.

One drama I caught recently was Credit Risk by R D Wingfield, a name that might be familiar to fans of A Touch of Frost. I didn’t specifically tune in for this, but I was intrigued by how a gang infiltrated the offices of a credit card company to siphon off payments. I also didn’t specifically tune in for Double Income No Kids Yet, featuring David Tennant as half of the only childless couple in a friend group, but I’ve so far listened to two episodes.

Such audio drama tends to have a high repeatability potential. The Tennant drama has aged reasonably well since its original run from 2001 to 2003. Credit Risk, by contrast, is somewhat fossilised in 1977, but it’s a fascinating historical snapshot of when many card payments were done manually, and by characters called ‘Mr Shadbolt’ and ‘Sales Lady’.

I haven’t even mentioned long-running soap The Archers, although I don’t listen to that.

For those who have only watched TV dramas, there are some immediate differences in how the dialogue sounds. On the screen, writers aim for a more naturalistic style, since the setting can be made obvious through vision. In audio drama, the scene needs to be set with words, tone and/or sound effects.

On account of this restriction, the dialogue can sound somewhat clunky, even though the production team will aim to reduce the word count as much as possible.

Although there are plenty of podcasts featuring audio drama, there isn’t a commercial UK station with comparable output. Any speech stations tend to focus on news, current affairs, debate and/or sport.

I wonder whether there’s a gap in the market to add regularly scheduled audio drama. Such programmes are typically made on a shoestring budget, and I don’t foresee much trouble finding a sponsor to offset at least part of the cost.

In the meantime, however, it looks like the BBC has a practical monopoly on broadcast scripted drama.

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Friday Night Amphitheatre

For over four months now, it hasn’t been possible to run my two writing groups in person because they’re both in pubs. While the venues cautiously opened a couple of weeks ago in line with government guidance, each group has a different obstacle preventing us from returning.

Let’s take the weekly National Novel Writing Month meet-ups. Last week, a member and I scoped out the venue with a view to deciding whether it was safe to bring members back. Before we could reach a conclusion, however, the decision was taken out of our hands.

NaNo HQ took a blanket decision not to endorse or support any in-person meet-ups until further notice. It’s a disappointing decision, especially as our area is controlling it well, but I understand they’re making the decision for every region in the world.

The other group is the monthly Hotchpotch open-mike for writers. Normally, we can attract a membership of 30 or more per session, so it wouldn’t be possible to cram everyone into the same space while leaving the required one-metre distance between people. On top of this, we have the additional hygiene issue of everyone sharing the same microphone.

What we can potentially do is arrange social night out where everyone sits at different tables, but this would have to be done in consultation with the bar.

That said, the rules are more relaxed in outdoor areas. On Friday night, I went to a street poetry event at a public amphitheatre in Dundee. This was run by Mark Richardson, who organises these ‘guerrilla’ gatherings on an occasional basis.

I’ve always half-joked that if Hotchpotch didn’t have a venue one month we would do it in the street. But was accounting only for the lack of a place and not a public health emergency. Besides, Mark did it first and his evenings have their own distinct character, so I’m not inclined to step on his toes.

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The Local Circuit

Last week, I talked about an open-mike night that I run in Dundee. However, the majority of the events I attend happen in Glasgow or Edinburgh. These cities are not prohibitively far away; I can reach either one by bus or train.

The problem is that I have an office job and I’m generally required to work until 5pm. I’m often obliged to take the train to arrive on time, even though bus travel is almost always cheaper. Coming back on the same night poses other challenges: do I book a cheap late-night bus where I need to hang around after the event finishes, or do I spend more on a train ticket I can use at any time?

Scottish Poetry Library, Crichton's Close, Can...
Scottish Poetry Library, Crichton’s Close, Canongate, Edinburgh Designed by Malcolm Fraser Architects, shortlisted for Channel 4’s Building of the Year 2000 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many poets do make a point of stopping in Dundee, but it would be great to have more of a home-grown scene. There’s a well-established poetry circuit between Glasgow and Edinburgh where acts from one city will regularly perform in the other, and so it would be great to have Dundee contributing to that route as well as being an equal player.

Among other initiatives, a couple of folks I know want to host a cabaret night, and a third is proposing a regular playwriting evening, so I think there’s definitely an appetite for doing something right here. I don’t know much about the scene in other major Scottish cities, but the potential is enormous.

Regardless of the logistics, it’s often a rewarding experience to be at spoken-word events.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the Jenny Lindsay show This Script & Other Drafts  in Glasgow; on Friday just gone, I was back in the city for a trans and non-binary event. On both occasions, I had an excellent time and I caught up with people I haven’t seen for a while. Leyla Josephine’s Hopeless is on the cards for Friday coming.