Rosalind Zinman
Radio Drama, edited by Peter Lewis, is a call to 'tune in to' the art of sound drama. For the general reader interested in media or the scholar of dramatic literature, this book provides a kaleidoscope of views on the nature of British radio drama and the basis for cross-national comparisons of the British, American, Canadian and Australian experiences. As an advocate of the art, Peter Lewis brings together the testimony of a wide range of contributors: script writers, producers and academics.
The following chapters: 'The Producer and Radio Drama: a Personal View;' 'British Radio Drama: a Survey'; 'The Nature of Radio Drama'; 'Icon or Symbol: the Writer and the 'Medium'; 'Popular Radio Drama'; 'The Essence That's Not Seen: Radio Adaptations of Stage Plays'; 'Classic Fiction by Radio'; 'Organising the Imagination: Sociological Perspectives on Radio Drama'; 'Radio Drama and English Literature'; a selected bibliography, notes on contributors and an index are included.
I wish to concentrate on three articles in this book, 'The Sponsor's vs. the Nation's Choice: North American Radio Drama' by Howard Fink, 'British Radio Drama: A Survey' by Hörst P. Priessnitz, and 'Radio Drama: the Australian Experience' by Rodney Pybus, because they provide the first ever comprehensive survey of North American (United States and Canada), British and Australian radio drama. From the beginning of broadcasting the unique geographic, demographic, political, social and economic realities of each of these nations have had an impact on the development and the organizational structures of radio drama. While vast land masses are common to the United States, Australia and Canada, relatively sparse populations in Canada and Australia create particular problems.
The nature and role of Canadian radio drama are much clarified by comparison with its American counterpart. Howard Fink's chapter addresses this task, for the first time, and in some detail. In Canada, there was a growing number of sustaining radio drama series, from 1930 on, and the proportion of serious to popular radio drama in Canada was much greater than the United States at any time. There were a number of important differences between the developments in the United States and Canada. In Canada commercial sponsorship never influenced the nature or contents of the major programs. The key characteristic of Canadian broadcasting is and has been its defensive and missionary stance: to protect Canadian culture and to develop national unity; sustaining programming reflected this policy. Television came earlier to the United States (1946) than it did to Canada (1952). Television combined with World War II hastened the demise of radio drama in the United States. Indeed, the end of the American golden age of radio ushered in the age of Canadian domination in radio, in the mid-forties.
The Canadian experience is unique in the development of both French and English language radio drama. As early as 1938 a separate French language CBC network was set up; moreover private Quebec stations produced popular radio drama. Thus a distinct tradition emerged. Again, live professional theatre in the French language developed earlier than in English. Until the 1950s, the CBC Radio Drama Department was almost the only outlet for professional English-speaking writers, actors, producers and directors in the theatre. It constituted Canada's National Theatre, albeit on the air. But, inevitably, like its American counterparts, Canadian radio drama was a casualty of television, by the sixties.
British radio drama too, for a time, was considered as a 'National Repertory Theatre of the Air', as Hörst Priessnitz points out. The conditions of wartime made the radio crucially important. It was the aim of the BBC Radio Drama Department to broadcast classic plays, especially Shakespeare, and all manner of adaptations from the theatre, novels, short stories. A key characteristic in British broadcasting is its orientation as a public service. The desire to meet the wide variety of audience interests and needs is reflected in the organization of various programs. Until 1939 the National and Regional Programmes were to meet local and extra local interests. Postwar organization resulted in three programs, the Light, the Home, and the Third, each with a different social class as target. That the Light and the Home were oriented more to mass appeal while the Third to an intellectual minority had a formative influence on radio plays. Since 1970 the reorganization has resulted in four divisions, Radios 1 and 4, with the attempt to merge and remove qualitative distinctions.
Rodney Pybus explains how British as well as American practice have had a tremendous influence on Australia. From the outset the commercial sector in Australia always had a stronger base than the non-commercial. In this respect Australian broadcasting comes closer to the United States. Its problems, though, are closer to Canadian ones. For the Australians, there also is the 'tyranny of distance' and a small population relative to the size of the country. During the past ten years a new confidence and freedom have developed resulting in new creative and indigenous works.
The special nature of radio drama, as a creative medium in its own right is explored in many of the articles. In radio drama we have a stage that is portable. It has variously been called the 'theatre of the mind'. The 'mass' of the audience is a misnomer. Listening to a radio drama is a personal, intimate experience. The resources of radio - acoustic variety, evocative sounds, poetry, music - are developed and used with endless scope for creative interplay. It is the listener who designs the stage, character, scene and costume. The enormous flexibility of this stage enables restrictions of time and space in the theatre to be overcome. The listener can be transported instantaneously back to antiquity or forward to future utopias. Radio drama captures the stream of consciousness and the weltanschauung of Theatre of the Absurd as no other medium can.
It is an error to think of the ultimate in radio drama as 'pure sound', as Jonathan Raban points out. Raban dispels any illusion about perfecting the form as an aural medium geared to a single channel, the ear. High fidelity, stereophony, quad, all the technical jazzamatazz, too often put the form into a mechanical straitjacket. Though we receive the sound through a single channel, what is evoked calls on a variety and intermingling of senses in image, imagination, memory, experience and feelings.
Having started its career drawing on other forms - live theatre, novels, short stories, film, - radio drama suffers an identity and status problem. The question of neglect is a prime issue among others raised in the book and has spawned a variety of metaphors: radio drama as a 'cinderella subject', the stepsister to television, and as 'Red China.' Though the cinderella metaphor used by Val Gielgud in 1932 is now perhaps a cliché, it nevertheless remains appropriate. So, too, is Wardle's (1968) description of radio drama as 'the critic's Red China: large, potent, simmering with expansionist ambitions, and ignored'.
More significant than the overshadowing of radio drama by television drama are a number of other factors that account for the status and identity problems of this medium. A very limited number of radio dramas are published, and access to those not published is difficult. Bibliographies are few (though the Fink-Morrison and Pagé-Legris bibliographies of Canadian radio drama are now available, as is the BBC radio drama catalogue). A repeat performance is somewhat rare. There are limited numbers of recordings made or kept. Maintaining archives has not been a priority in the business of broadcasting. Copyright regulations are complex and archaic. The ephemeral quality of a radio broadcast is exacerbated by all these realities. Despite these difficulties, neglect of radio drama by drama critics, literary scholars, cultural historians, mass media and communication specialists is tantamount to a blindspot. Certainly television eclipsed radio listening in general and radio drama in particular, but this was only for a brief time. Radio drama created - and continues to create - a body of important work, significant in drama and literature generally, and with a wider cultural and historical importance, which (in Canada especially) needs critical attention. It is towards getting on with the critical show that Lewis' book is directed.
This book calls on all who might be interested in media, in dramatic literature, in history and sociology of culture, literature and the arts. Perhaps because of the wide range, the selections in the book may be too detailed for some, and not enough for others. Also the Select Bibliography is limited for scholars in that the publishers are omitted, a small yet annoying detail. These problems should not detract from the book. Radio Drama contributes to the critical discourse, to an appreciation of the intricacies and special qualities of the form, and particularly for Canadians, an illumination of Canadian radio drama history.
Bibliographical Note
This book, together with British Radio Dramatists, edited by John Drakakis (Cambridge 1981), and Radio Drama by Ian Rodger (Macmillan 1982), are recent attempts to bring radio drama to the fore as a serious object of academic study. They all follow the successful Radio Literature Conference held at Collingwood College, University of Durham in 1977 (see Papers of the Radio Literature Conference, 2 vols, ed. by Lewis). Lance Sieveking, The Stuff of Radio (London 1934); Val Gielgud, British Radio Drama 1922-1956 (London 1957); Donald McWhinnie, The Art of Radio (London 1959) and the comprehensive work of Armin P. Frank, Das Hörspiel (Heidelberg 1963); Martin Esslin's papers: 'The National Theatre of the Air' BBC Lunch-time Lectures, Second Series, 4 (London 1964), 'Radio Drama Today' in BBC New Radio Drama (London 1966), 'The Mind As a Stage' Theatre Quarterly 1 (3) (July-Sept. 1971), pp 5-11 and Irving Wardle's Introduction to New English Dramatists 12: Radio Plays (Harmondsworth 1968) are important contributions. Two rare bibliographies are Chadwyck-Healey, BBC Radio Drama Catalogue, Microfiche of the Catalogue of the Play Library, BBC Drama Department, Broadcasting House, (London 1923); and Manfred Erdmenger, 'Bibliographie des englischen Hörspiels', Anglia 95 (3/4) (1977), pp 454-69 (list of published British radio plays).
In Canada the following have placed radio drama in the forefront: the pioneering work of Pierre Pagé and Renée Legris, Le Comique et l'humour à la radio québécoise; aperçus historiques et textes choisis, volumes 1 and 2 (Fides 1976/1979); Répertoire des oeuvres de la littérature radio-phonique québécoise 1930-1970 (with Louise Blouin) (Fides 1975); Répertoire des dramatiques Québécoises à la Télévision 1952-1977 (Fides 1977); Howard Fink with Brian Morrison, Canadian National Theatre on the Air: CBC, CRBC, CNR Radio Drama 1925-1961 - A Descriptive Bibliography and Union List, (University of Toronto Press, TBP, 1982); the work of the Concordia Radio Drama Project; and the efforts of ASCRT in the preservation of radio drama materials. Forthcoming is Canadian Drama Spring 1983, complete issue on radio and television drama. Canadian Theatre Review October 1982, is a complete issue on radio drama.