The radio play rehearsals are fun. I'm enjoying hearing people use different voices to play multiple characters. And now we're beginning to give the radio scripts some movement by choreographing the actors to move between the two microphones to show that scenes happen in different places.
Creating the scripts for the actors to use has been interesting. There is a proper format for radio plays that's different to a normal stage play or television drama. A radio script is usually printed in large type with plenty of space between the lines, so that there's lots of white space on the page to make it easy for the actors to read.
The Dad's Army script was the television version and therefore printed in much smaller type so it had to be scaled up for easier 'live' us by the actors.
By contrast the script for A King's Speech was easy as it came in standard radio play format. I had so much help from Mark Burgess, who wrote the original script for the BBC Radio Four. Mark sent me ... by special next-day delivery! ... the exact script as used by the BBC, all ready to go in radio format. Thank you, Mark, the actors really appreciated that.
Dave Barney
Creating the scripts for the actors to use has been interesting. There is a proper format for radio plays that's different to a normal stage play or television drama. A radio script is usually printed in large type with plenty of space between the lines, so that there's lots of white space on the page to make it easy for the actors to read.
The Dad's Army script was the television version and therefore printed in much smaller type so it had to be scaled up for easier 'live' us by the actors.
By contrast the script for A King's Speech was easy as it came in standard radio play format. I had so much help from Mark Burgess, who wrote the original script for the BBC Radio Four. Mark sent me ... by special next-day delivery! ... the exact script as used by the BBC, all ready to go in radio format. Thank you, Mark, the actors really appreciated that.
Dave Barney