Category: Podcast (Page 80 of 114)

In Slate Magazine yesterday, Mac Rogers- creator of the “found footage” style of audio drama that I’m going to call fictionalized podcasts or Podficts from now on. It’s a kind of fusion of audio drama and podcasting in which the hosts identify the podcasts and recordings as real, but they are truly fictionalized.

While some folks have identified this as “Docudrama” that doesn’t feel right to me either. Wikipedia identifies a docudrama as:

“A docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of radio and television programming, feature film, and staged theatre, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual events. On stage, it is sometimes known as documentary theatre.”

And these Podficts aren’t in anyway re-enactments of actual events.

What’s exciting is we’re looking at a very new kind of fusion of the audio drama form. Mac Rogers seems very excited at the idea of serializing story telling and he offers a look at some of the rules he would suggest to produce. While I love all kinds of audio drama in the foray, and I hope this brings new listeners to the medium, I’d hate to see this become the only form of choice. It would be like saying the only popular television style is first-person camera shows. After a while, it’s important to let the audience know the medium is robust and diverse!

Sibby Wieland, from Sound Stages Radio has been a long time advocate and champion of the amazing medium we all know and love- audio drama. Her seminal works along with those of Pete Lutz from Pulp-Pourri Theatre, Richard “Captain Radio” Summers, and our own efforts here at the Sonic Society have pressed to provide World Audio Drama Day on the 30th of October in fond remembrance of an age of panic during the initial broadcast of Orson Welles’ adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.

In this article with Radio World the focus seems to be audio drama trying to reinvent itself. Is that really the case? Or hasn’t that happened over a decade ago now?

Little John (Peter Greenall) tells the backstory of Robin Hood and his merry men in this fantastic BBC Radio drama. As the Daily Post says:

Peter, inspired to become an actor thanks to his mother, Mary, who taught English and ran the drama group at Prestatyn High School, said: “For me, Little John was largely a victim of circumstance. A man who was an outlaw because he was honourable, yet living in a time and way of life where the law forced people to prop up an immoral establishment through crippling taxes, often to the detriment of their families.

So, listen to the original score by Samuel Pegg, strap on your best longbow, don your forest green and your merry laugh and join Mr. Greenall in the adventure!

BBC4 is providing some unique opportunities to listen to plays this month. Check out the article at newsonnews:

BBC Radio 4 has announced that one of the plays would be the broadcast premiere of Arthur Miller’s unproduced screenplay The Hook. It has also announced that the series will also feature world premieres of Heart Of Darkness by Orson Welles, and The Blind Man by Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman – all sitting in the station’s drama slot on Saturday afternoon at 2.30pm across three weekends in October.

Jeremy Howe, Drama Commissioner for BBC Radio 4, says: “To discover an unmade screenplay of the calibre of any of these is a find in itself, but to unearth three is little short of a miracle. I hope our audience will agree that being offered these three masterpieces on consecutive Saturdays is a massive treat. Get yourself a long drink, a bucket of popcorn, and sit back and enjoy the cream of Hollywood in its heyday – three brand spanking new stories from Arthur Miller, Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles.”