VOICES IN THE DARK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 932, 21 June 1957, Page 6

VOICES IN THE DARK

IN January 15, 1924, "radio drama emitted its first faint infant wail," according to Richard Hughes, the author of the play concerned, This play, Danger, was given a new production last year’ when the BBC held a short festival of plays specially written for the radio, and it is this production that listeners to 1XN will hear on Wednesday, June 26. In a talk broadcast by the BBC Richard Hughes described the problems he faced when writing a play for the then new medium. "Those were the days of the silent film,’ he said, "and our ‘listening play’ (as I dubbed it) would have to be the silent film’s missing half. We had to rely on dramatic speech and sounds entirely-and it had never been done before. Our audience was used to

using their eyes; this was a blind man’s world we were introducing them to. In time they would accept its conventions, but- how would they react on this first occasion? Better make it easy for them just this once. Something which happens in the dark, so the characters themselves keep complaining they can’t see." Since then radio drama has come far, and a multitude of other writers have written for the microphone, which has become an accepted medium for drama. The Listener, reminded of the BBC beginnings, found itself remembering ‘the infancy and growth of what has now become one of the busiest NZBS de-partments-Productions. In the early days of broadcasting here few plays had been adapted for radio, or were available in New Zea.land; there was no Productions Section -or for that matter no NZBS either. Nevertheless, plays were produced and enjoyed over the air in all the main centfes, with local casts and producers going direct on to the air. Then in 1934 came the agreement between the N.Z. Broadcasting Board and the BBC under which the BBC sent us their monthly lists of plays produced, with details of copyright. The Board’s officers weuld choose those they wanted to produce and then get outside producers to present the play for live broadcast. In 1933 there appeared the first BBC transcriptions, a batch of 10 programmes, including plays which were the subject of many appreciative letters, And another particularly notable occa-

sion about this time occurred when Dame Sybil Thorndike and the company with which she was touring presented The Merchant of Venice. In 1934, "as radio performances are likely to become part and parcel of broadcasting service," the Board ordered two sets of recording apparatus, and this equipment came into use at 2YA the following year. From then on, although for a time many plays continued to be broadcast live, an increasing number were recorded and sent round the stations. "Those early days were lots of fun," said one member of the NZBS who had been in the thick of it, "for broadcasting was smaller and less_ specialised. Unlike music, drama had not been recorded, so we had to set to and produce it." In the recorded productions help came from drama enthusiasts, but others who had little experience in drama-indeed, whose interests ‘were musical-added some very fine voices to the casts. Among those who recorded these plays were the late Karl Atkinson and the late Drayton Venables, Professor (now Sir) James Shelley, then Director of Broadcasting; William Yates, then Supervisor of Plays and now Director of Broadcasting; Malcolm Rickard, the present Supervisor of Programmes for the National Division, and many others who later became prominent in other fields. In 1937 the Service held a playwriting competition, and discovered in W. Graeme Holder a first-rate writer of radio plays. His winning play, The Time y

Factor, was broadcast here and overseas, and from then on until his death in 1944 he regularly turned out good producible plays. His greatest strength lay in his characterisation, which was combined with a rare gift for dramatic situation and a sense of the microphone. Especially memorable were the long series of Victoriana which he wrote to reconstruct the political and social scene of 19th century England. As the number of scripts available increased, and with them the number of recorded productions, someone was needed to take charge of all this activity. In 1938 Bernard Beeby was brought from Christchurch, and from then on all plays were recorded in Wellington. The task was heavy, for in that first year Mr Beeby himself produced 41 major productions, 38 shorter ones, and 236 serial episodes. "IT did everything," he told The Listener, "acting, producing, and sound effects. But it wasn’t a new field for me, since I had produced the first radio play in Australia, Conan Doyle’s The Speckled Band. In Wellington my first production was Victoriana No. 3, followed by Hay Fever, produced live. We also produced, in the first years, Old English, Thy Light Is Come, Loyalties, Strife, Man of Destiny, and Money With Menaces." "To add a piquant dash of uncertainty to production,’ Mr Beeby went on, "the first studios in Waring-Taylor Street were not sound-proof, and many were the aeroplanes and. car-engines that were heard where none had ever been before. Then we shifted to the Standard Insurance Building, and a little later: to our present headquarters in the Loan and Mercantile Building. I had previously acquired an assistant, and here I was joined by two scriptwriters, Russell Reid and Eric Bracwell. From then on our staff gradually increased." To introduce new voices to these Wellington plays, and make use of the large numbers of fine actors in the other centres, Productions every Easter would gather a group, and record plays, and even serials, non-stop-perhaps as many as 10 in that short period. The war took away many of the established actors, as well as increasing’ the load of documentaries and publicity material. "At its. end. we picked up our full schedule," Mr Beeby went on, "and added school broadcasts (until Broadcasts to Schools became a separate department), and ventures into musical

comedy, as well as documentary programmes. Now, of course, there are production studios in the other centres, although Wellington still buys the scripts." Early recording was done on 78 r.p.m. records, three minutes at a time. "Easy enough to rehearse," said William Austin, whose radio experience goes back to pre-war days, "but the needles were always breaking, and the volume faded

at the beginning and end of each record. With the tape recorder we can rehearse a whole scene, and get a better buildup." Recording methods are not the only ones that have changed. Richard Hughes found the sound effects for the first BBC play rather difficult: "Someone ran round. the corner and enlisted the effects man from a near-by cinema — windmachine and all. But still we could make nothing sound as it was meant to sound; even in the) studio, and leaving out of account’ the primitive transmission of those days which reduced all sounds to a single indistinguishable ‘wump’ which might be the roaring of Niagara or the shutting of a door. To make the voices sound like an underground tunnel, the cast had to put their heads in buckets." Those in New Zealand who helped in early pro-

ctions Temembverea the time when someone had to crackle a pound note to make the noise of a motor-launch, and another had to rub the heels of his new tan shoes together so that listeners could hear the creaking rigging of a sailing ship in a storm. "We all had to pitch in and help-and most of us became expert at one animal or other." Now, of course, there is a large library of sound effects, and with the plenty has come an economy of use,

with the emphasis upon a more atmospheric drama with sound effects only as highlights-‘After all, we sometimes do leave doors open"-while the more sensitive mocern microphones’ can easily convey distance. Incidental music, too, has also changed over the years. "Once all we had was on early German recordings," Mr Beeby said. "Very corny stuff, with little variety, and it was a major event when a new shipment came in. Now there’s plenty of music, including special discs for background music. And more and more plays are being written with music as part of the original conception. The BBC have had some notable ones, including one that we produced here, Christopher Columbus, We have had music written here for various plays, and among those who have written for us are Douglas Lilburn, Alex Lindsay, Owen Jensen, Ashley Heenan, David Sell and Doris Sheppard." While music and sound effects play their part, radio drama is dependent above all on the actors’ voices, and radio acting demands special techniques. These techniques have developed slowly, and the early radio actors used the stage techniques. They tended to forget that their audience was not in a hall but, as Felix Felton, a BBC producer has said, "so close that they could touch them. Radio transmission makes increased demands upon an actor’s technique. The microphone, bringing him into close-up, calls for the same sureness of touch and fineness of detail in his vocal work as the filmcamera does in his make-up and facial expression." Mr Beeby agreed with Mr Felton, and added that he is still auditioning about 200 people a year. "It takes time," he said, "to develop a good radio actor, through small parts to major ones, and the producer has to help

actors new to radio not only to play the part well, but also he has to watch such things as where they stand." "And some things are not easy," put in William Austin. "In one play I produced the actor I had cast found he simply could not accurately play a Yo*kshire boy with a heavy cold. We had to use someone else." "Yes," Mr Beeby said, "accents are important, and even more is the ability to sound completely convincing when still reading from a- script, a very hard thing for many actors used to the stage." So radio drama has developed its techniques along with its technical resources, helped along by those imaginative writers who first wrote for the medium. The first play, Danger, was written round a situation where the characters, as well as the audience, could see nothing. Apart from the sound the play cannot exist. A few years later Tyrone Guthrie wrote ‘The Squirrel’s Cage, with its weird and effective use of stylised voices and chorus, and The Flowers Are Not for You to Pick, in which, in thé first astounding use of the flash-back technique in radio, a drowning man reviewed his life. This play, broadcast here in 1933, had a tremendous impact upon all who heard it. D. G. Bridson’s The March of the ’45 was the first of many verse chronicles written for the BBC, since when radio has established itself as a natural medium for poetic drama. And writers are still meeting the challenge of radio drama. A few years ago Dylan Thomas’s "play for voices," Under Milk Wood, made an astonishing appearance, and it is only a few weeks since New Zealanders heard David Gascoyne’s "radio-phonic poem," Night Thoughts, linking words with a new kind of music: The future, whatever the challenge from television, will undoubtedly bring new accomplishments to radio drama.