The Seattle Star

An interview with award-winning radio playwright Katie Hims.

Audiences do not need more simplification of issues in the world, they need easier access to those issues–and better guides through them. Dan Rebellato’s Negative Signs of Progress offers an example how to do topical radio drama right.

Sebastian Bączkiewicz is one of England’s leading radio playwrights. Recently recipient of the Silver Award at the Prix Europa, his work reveals his deep concerns with folklore and mythology, and how it all influences the modern, rational world. Omar Willey caught up with him for this interview.

If one believes the recent article in The Atlantic Magazine, serials are on the rise again in both television and literature. Whatever the reasons for their current fashion, what lies behind the trendiness of the serial is a much darker matter.

The Radio Theater Channel brings out their new sister to the debutante ball: the Radio Book Channel.

The BBC have announced a prototype website covering the past sixty years of BBC World Service Broadcasts, including over eight hundred radio plays among the 70,000 pieces in the archive. This is an extraordinary effort and deserves the highest attention and even a little begrudging praise from those like me who tend to be naysayers wherever Auntie is concerned.

Thoughts on this year’s BBC Audio Drama Awards.

I wrote about the BBC Audio Drama Awards last year but without much criticism. This year’s shortlist makes me a bit more critical.

Displaying an immense range of knowledge and interests, his radio plays run the diapason of thematic concerns. Yet whatever his subject be, Mr. Pownall’s plays are distinctive and brilliant. They reveal the deft hand of a master who truly believes in the power of a medium often in danger of being reduced to radio gaga and triviality.

Professor Guralnick’s analysis is text-based. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. However, one can go too far.