Part 4

Today I got punished rather, I had suffered the consequences of my actions because I was 10 minutes late. I don’t know what my dialogue is going to be about yet. I’m not even upset about it. You do the crime you do the time is what I think. Anyway I’ll ponder on that later. Moving back to the core issue here; Audio Drama.

Well today I came across something that confused me a bit. This was the notion that Radio Drama excludes “plays-for-the-ear”. First I read that audio drama is similar to regular theater in the sense that it is acted out with various aids, but is recorded to be listened to and isn’t watched. But now I’ve read that it isn’t a play for the ear, which is exactly what I thought it was. Ok so now I need to know what a “play-for-the-ear” is.

According to the extract from the online book I’ve been reading by Richard L. Fish “play’s-for-the-ear” are not broadcast where as audio drama’s are. My next question naturally is what is the point of that? Anyway I’m not going to go deeper with that. But something else has struck me. According to this author audio dramas are very rarely comedies, which comes as a shock to me as most people tend to favor listening to things that make them laugh? Well at least I do, I’d much rather watch a soap opera than listen to it on the radio, I think I may just be more of a visually stimulation person.

Fish then gives the four distinct characteristics of Audio Drama and these are as follows:
• Music: this is linked to the feelings trying to be portrayed and are generally emotive, that is they make the audience feel something in particular in relation to the storyline. The music in audio dramas can also represent the beginning and end of the show, beginnings and endings of scenes, opening or closing of a ‘curtain’, create suspense and give to drama its character so to speak.
• Silence: used as a timing aid.
• Speech: this is our source of information and presents the different human characters to the audience.
• Sound Effects: these create a more life like sense to the drama. It aids us to visualize in our heads what is happening, where it is happening, and how.

However if a piece of work does not have all these elements is it then not considered as being in the genre of Audio Theater?