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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/25/2007
Posts: 5
Points: 57
Location: Provo, UT
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Since the talkback for "Dial Tones," I've been thinking a lot about the audio play for and potential Renaissance it could have in the age of internet and iPod. Over my three-week break at home, I recorded some comedy sketches with an old high school playwrighting friend and was surprised at how cheap and simple the recording process is for voice: you don't need CD quality at all, so for $400 bucks or so you could be set up to go from scratch.
Obviously, disadvantage of switching from stage plays to audio plays is losing: the visual dimension, the immediacy of audience interaction, the social nature of the experience, etc.
The big advantages: less rehearsal time for better quality, since you gets do-overs, much easier distribution to a wide audience, and endless shelf life.
We're thinking of adapting one full-length script to the audio format and recording in the next few months, and it's one that I think will make the transistion well artistically. Yes, we'll lose elements but I think there's a benefit to the intimacy of audience experience when you're listening to something alone vs. in a group that will serve this confessional-type play well PLUS you don't have to worry as much about offending people in a podcast-esque format as on a stage where you're inviting people to come. If you don't like an audioplay download, you can just turn it off and ignore it. Even if you are tempted to like a stage play, you might not if your girlfriend is with you and is obviously offended :), and she might be upset for feeling stuck in a theatre setting with material she isn't comfortable with. (The girlfriend there is strictly hypothetical, of course.)
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else had put serious thought to this form or knew of any current successes in the audio play form. Thoughts?
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Rank: Visitor
Joined: 1/10/2008
Posts: 21
Points: 63
Location: Lodz, Poland
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I know that for a long time I've been trying to wrap my head around what things visuals can do that text can't and what things text can do that visuals can't. I started into it from a fascination with Terrence Malick's voice-overs. I am really interested in the disparity that causes between text and image. So I started watching a lot of silent film, the pinnacle being Murnau's "The Last Laugh" told with virtually no intertitles, or maybe "Film" by Samuel Beckett, depending on your focus. But on the other side, I spent, and plan to spend, a lot of time and energy with Pinter's radio plays. I've come up with my own conclusions, but those are places I've found to be useful starting points.
I've also heard that Churchhill's radio plays are highly worthwhile as well, but haven't read any.
More theory and less pragmatic than your question, but I hope it was worth reading.
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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/26/2007
Posts: 114
Points: 195
Location: El Cerrito, California
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. I wish you luck with this because I love audio plays. The only high-profile attempt I know was ten years ago or so when Stephen King brought some to radio. Not a success for him.
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Rank: Visitor
Joined: 12/1/2007
Posts: 3
Points: 9
Location: New York City
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In keeping with the Mormon part of this letters discussion, I'll throw out the dramatized church history and scripture tapes Orson Scott Card and possibly some other people wrote some time in the early eighties or late seventies. I actually have no idea what the history of the tapes are but they are kind of great. We used to listen to them a lot when I was a little kid before my family got a tv, which made me a socially awkward child but I always won those quiz games sunday school teachers make you play when they don't come up with a lesson. I've started listening to them again in the last couple days and they do a great job of telling stories without visuality. Good enough that I understood them as a child and I can still enjoy them now. Just a thought.
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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/25/2007
Posts: 68
Points: 204
Location: Utah
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I've actually thought about doing this with a couple of my plays too, James, after I listened to these great radio version of the Chronicles of Narnia and some other radio plays I listened to on a trip to Idaho. What I love is when radio plays are also able to incorporate sound effects, music, etc.
Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnamity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its gins and snares can be revealed, and how to shun it (Discourses of Brigham Young, p.243; Bookcraft, 199 
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Rank: Visitor
Joined: 10/26/2007
Posts: 13
Points: 39
Location: New York
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James Goldberg wrote:Since the talkback for "Dial Tones," I've been thinking a lot about the audio play for and potential Renaissance it could have in the age of internet and iPod. Over my three-week break at home, I recorded some comedy sketches with an old high school playwrighting friend and was surprised at how cheap and simple the recording process is for voice: you don't need CD quality at all, so for $400 bucks or so you could be set up to go from scratch. I think that you will find the quality nearly acceptable for a CD also. The best part of this idea is the fact that a regular podcast of material like this will build an audience for this kind of material. It may be possible then to actually sell CDs or paper versions of the plays. The Mormon market already went through a time when books-on-tape and talks-on-tape were a significant portion of the market (I don't know why this has dropped off in recent years), and it is clear in the broader US culture that podcasts and sites like Audible.com are tapping into a considerable market for spoken-word audio material. Who knows, you could end up starting a whole new audio phase in the market. Kent
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