Radio Drama

by Tim Crook

Radio Drama brings together the practical skills needed for radio drams, such as directing, writing and sound design, with media history and communication theory.
Challenging the belief that sound drama is a 'blind medium', Radio Drama shows how experimentation in radio narrative has blurred the dividing line between fiction and reality in modern media. Using extracts from scripts and analysing radio broadcasts from America, Britain, Canada and Australia, the book explores the practicalities of producing drama for radio. Tim Crook illustrates how far radio drama has developed since the first 'audiophonic production' and evaluates the future of radio drama in the age of live phone-ins and immedate access to programmes on the Internet.

Genres: Nonfiction, Drama

312 pages, Paperback

First published September 9, 1999

Reviews

[Sarah Grace Grzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite dry throughout, without very much pertinent\helpful information. Some of the history of audio drama\radio drama was interesting, but for the rest, I mostly skimmed.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bit of a mixed bag of a book. There's lots of fascinating material about the history of radio drama, and quite a bit of discussion about the unique capabilities of radio drama as an art form. However, the book has a more academic take than I'd have ideally liked - I'd have preferred slightly less literary theory, and slightly more literary practice. The chapters of the book that do deal with the nitty gritty of writing and producing a radio play have a sketchy, disconnected quality, as if they consist of classroom handouts hastily compiled into book form.

Still, there's much good material in this, and it has a well-annotated bibliography, which I expect to be a good guide to further reading.

[Liska · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was alright. It had some interesting things to say about linguistic theory in connection with radio, but it didn't seem completely thought through. Also, there was a lot about radio documentary? This seemed completely off topic to both the title of the book and everything in it (and also uninteresting). All in all, a good resource to begin with, but don't take it as infallible.