Radio Drama: Theory and Practice

Rating:
Summary: Best Book Published on Radio Drama
Review: I am a PhD student and this book provides the most up to date and well written outline of studying and making radio drama that I can find anywhere in publications. Other books on radio drama are very old (about 20 years). Crook not only does an original media history on the subject which is quite the best scholarship on this subject available, he really inspires you to appreciate this wonderful form of story telling. You get an intellectual/academic theory on things like radio drama writing which is done in a clear style and then you are offered the nuts and bolts of the craft.

The text also modernises all the existing approaches to radio drama. The section on the role of improvised/live radio drama in phone-in programmes and hoaxes is brilliant and original. He also takes a well known BBC radio play 'Spoonface Steinberg' by Lee Hall which I happened to think was one of the best things I have heard in recent years. (It's also available on cassette via Amazon.com) In his writing Crook explains why artistically and from a producer/listener's point of view it was so good and merits attention. But then he subjects it to Cultural Studies analysis and raises the kind of questions which are going to enhance radio drama as an important cultural form of storytelling. This is really critical and thought-provoking.

You will not be disappointed reading this book if you are in to storytelling, radio, radio drama, writing etc.

I checked out the comments by reviewer 'Gwen- Yale University'. But none of the quotes she has in her review appear anywhere in the book.

They are taken from an on-line essay by Crook 'International Radio Drama.' Everybody's entitled to their point of view but I think it is good that mainstream scholars are now recognising African-American radio dramatists such as Richard Durham and centrally rooting their position.

In Radio Drama-Theory and Practice Crook adopts a McLuhanesque line on how audio drama has a future on the Internet and persists as a story-telling presence in commercial production on most radio formats.

There is also a very helpful bibliography which can take you to radio drama texts you may never knew existed.

I would also recommend a book on Radio Acting by Alan Beck which was published 3 years ago. In the past 'British Radio Drama' by Drakakis (Cambridge University Press 1981) is magnificent. Let's hope there are more good books on radio drama coming out.

So my conclusion is read or buy this book and you will not be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Really Good Value New Look At Radio Drama
Review: I found this book pretty cool because you get an angle on the academic things such as a look at media history through radio or sound plays which takes you right up into the World Wide Web world.

It is also the first book that has explained how to structure a play and juggle the writing of characters with sorting out a plot. I know there are other things around but this book explains it. Suddenly it all clicked.

There is a long section on improvisation in live radio and it kind of bravely suggests that hoaxers on the radio are live dramatists.

I found this book really good value because it does not insult the intelligence of the reader and also it is not full of that academic stuffy kind of writing which sends me to sleep.

Fully recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A seldom covered topic
Review: I read some of this book online and later found it in our academic library. I have to say that it is clumsily written, and silly; at one point he says, "The explorers before me are few and far between, but no less eloquent." Well, one would have wished Mr. Crook were even somewhat eloquent. Although it is true that we who live (at least at the moment) in the West have little knowledge of Asian, African, and "MidEastern" radio drama and that African American radio drama is more familiar to city dwellers, Mr. Crook seems to have little or no knowledge of how this ignorance has persisted. Instead he goofily attributes it to "with the residual racism that Afro-Americans have had to contend with in their own history and the continued marginalisation of Asian and African literature, oral tradition and story telling culture in Western societies." One wishes he took the trouble to read Cornel West, bell hooks, and other important voices of conscience on the issue of African American culture. Mr. Crook's book suggests that priviledged white males who produce these "jargonless" studies like his own work on radio drama would do well to listen to what these other voices are saying. His book might have had some value, instead of reading like a college sophomore's light-weight bluster that suggests insincerity and bad faith.

Rating:
Summary: A seldom covered topic
Review: I read some of this book online and later found it in our academic library. I have to say that it is clumsily written, and silly; at one point he says, "The explorers before me are few and far between, but no less eloquent." Well, one would have wished Mr. Crook were even somewhat eloquent. Although it is true that we who live (at least at the moment) in the West have little knowledge of Asian, African, and "MidEastern" radio drama and that African American radio drama is more familiar to city dwellers, Mr. Crook seems to have little or no knowledge of how this ignorance has persisted. Instead he goofily attributes it to "with the residual racism that Afro-Americans have had to contend with in their own history and the continued marginalisation of Asian and African literature, oral tradition and story telling culture in Western societies." One wishes he took the trouble to read Cornel West, bell hooks, and other important voices of conscience on the issue of African American culture. Mr. Crook's book suggests that priviledged white males who produce these "jargonless" studies like his own work on radio drama would do well to listen to what these other voices are saying. His book might have had some value, instead of reading like a college sophomore's light-weight bluster that suggests insincerity and bad faith.

Rating:
Summary: Radio Drama- The Content.
Review: Radio Drama brings together the practical skills needed for radio drama, such as directing, writing and sound design, with media history and communication theory. From the early audio broadcasts of 1914 and the development of General Electric's New York WGY station in 1922, through Orson Welles' startling Halloween broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938, to more recent radio spoofs and the subversive challenge from 'media guerrillas', the book explores the history and contemporary practice of radio drama.

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. The text 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 immediate access to programmes on the Internet.

With bibliography and notes 287 pages.

Contents:

Part I. Practice Meets Theory 1. A New Media History Perspective Through Audio Drama 2. Radio Drama as Modernity 3. The Electrophone or Theatrophone: broadcasting audio drama before the radio 4. The Six Ages of Audio Drama and the Internet Epoch 5. From Sound Houses to the Phonograph Sound Play 6. A Technological Time-line 7. A Culturalist Approach to Internet Audio Drama

Part II Sound Theory and Practice. 8 Radio Drama is NOT a Blind Medium 9 Sound Design Vocabulary 10 The Cinematic and Musical Inspiration

Part III The New Radio Drama Form: Skits and Live Improvisations. 11 Blurring Fiction with Reality 12 Radio Drama Panics: a cross-cultural phenomenon 13 Moving from Burlesque to Propaganda and News 14 The War of the Worlds Effect: Spoonface Steinberg? 15 Spoonface Steinberg: constructing the Holocaust as a means of identification.

Part IV The Theory and Practice of Writing Audio Drama 16 The Writing Agenda for Audio Drama 17 Creating the Character and Effective Use of Characterisation 18 Writing Dialogue

Part V Constructing The Radio Drama/Documentary Feature 19 The Phantom Distinction 20 Making the Documentary Feature

Part VI The Practice and Theory of Directing and Performance 21 Directorial Responsibility 22 Managing the Production 23 Experimental Direction and Performance

Notes. Audio drama bibliography Index.