Goldsmiths Audio Drama Festival 2018
A one-day Goldsmiths Festival featuring creative talents from the world of audio drama brought to you by the Department of Media and Communications.
SCHEDULE AND GUESTS
SCHEDULE: 24TH MARCH 2018, PROFESSOR STUART HALL BUILDING
10.00am: Arrivals
10.15am: Welcome by Professor Tim Crook
10.30am: Producers panel - chaired by lecturer and playwright Richard Shannon.
Panellists: Sasha Yevtushenko, Jonquil Panting, Fiona McAlpine, Roger James Elsgood
11.30am: Coffee break
12:00pm: Professor Séan Street – Lecture
1:00pm: Lunch
2:00pm. Writers’ panel – Roy Williams, Joy Wilkinson, Claudine Toutoungi, Shelley Silas. Chaired by lecturer and radio dramatist Philip Palmer.
3:00pm: Play readings – extracts from two outstanding post-grad radio plays.
3.30pm: Podcasting panel – John Wakefield, Dave Pickering, Jen Adamthwaite and Sarah Golding. Chaired by MA Radio student Arlie Adlington.
4.30pm: Roy Williams, Guest of Honour – concluding remarks
4.45pm: Drinks
6:00pm: End
Guest of Honour: Roy Williams
Roy began writing plays in 1990 and is now arguably one of the country's leading dramatists. In 2000 he was the joint-winner of the George Devine Award and in 2001 he was awarded the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright. He was awarded an OBE for Services to Drama in the 2008 Birthday Honours List. His theatre work includes LIFT OFF(Royal Court); and STARSTRUCK (Tricycle - Winner of John Whiting Award, Alfred Fagon Award and EMMA Award for Best Play).
His radio work includes adaptations of ER Braithwaite's A CHOICE OF STRAWS and TO SIR WITH LOVE as well as original plays TELL TALE and HOMEBOYS. He has also created and written seven series of THE INTERROGATION for BBC Radio 4.
Key Note Speaker: Professor Séan Street
Professor Street is a writer, poet and broadcaster and Britain’s first Professor of Poetry. He is now an Emeritus Professor at the University of Bournemouth and a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His books on radio include CROSSING THE ETHER; THE POETRY OF RADIO, THE COLOUR OF SOUND; THE MEMORY OF SOUND: PRESERVING THE SONIC PAST and SOUND POETICS: INTERACTION AND PERSONAL IDENTITY.
On his website, he writes:
Radio I regard as one of the seminal cultural leaps of the 20th century, and it has now reached the point where historical study and research relating to its archives, its policies and its personalities, is of significant value to our understanding of our recent, turbulent past. My books on this subject have sought to preserve and illuminate some aspects of the receding succession of moments we call history.
It all comes down to sound: the first sense that activates at birth, and, so some say, the last to desert us when we die.
PRODUCER PANEL
Sasha Yevtushenko
Alexander "Sasha" Yevtushenko is a BBC Drama producer and director.
As a young man, Sasha threw himself into guerrilla film-making with egotistical abandon and plotted his route to the Hollywood big time. A chance encounter with BBC Radio Drama in 2003 led to an unexpected and now lengthy diversion. Fifteen years on, Sasha has directed and produced around 150 audio productions, and won awards for Best Sound, Best Adaptation and Best Series/Serial. Although the embers of the Hollywood dream still glow, up to this date audio drama has proved to be an addiction impossible to shake.
His directing work includes: THE PROBLEMS OF CELL 13; THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO; RED AND BLUE; DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?; THE HATTON GARDEN HEIST; Toni Morrison’s BELOVED: and THE FURIES.
Jonqil Panting
Jonquil writes:
‘I produce and direct for BBC Radio Drama. As well as original dramas, comedies and major dramatisations, I particularly enjoy making factual or verbatim drama, from histories like THE CLINTONS, TOMMIES and THE PRICE OF OIL to untold stories from unheard voices, like the TEST CASE series, WELCOME TO ZAATARI, THE ROAD TO BANI WALID, and MY SON THE DOCTOR.
Fiona McAlpine
Fiona McAlpine, theatre director, actress and radio producer, has been working in Radio Drama for the past twenty years. She has directed many afternoon dramas, classic serials and 15 minute dramas with her own company, Allegra Productions, and other independents.
Her radio work includes Philip Larkin’s early novels, Jilland A Girl in Winter, The Sea, The Sea with Jeremy Irons, Iris Murdoch: Dream Girl starring Helen McCrory, and Carmilla for Audible Originals, with David Tennant and Rose Leslie. Last October, she produced The Dark Tower by Louis MacNeice, recorded in front of a live audience at Orford Church, Suffolk, broadcast on Radio 3 the following evening.
Roger James Elsgood
For over thirty years Roger has produced content for film, audio, radio, corporate, educational and training video and live theatrical production.
He is a specialist in adaptation, script development and dramaturgy.
His work for radio includes: 'Mogadishu' BBC Radio 3; 'Beau Geste' BBC Radio 4; 'Inside the Taj' BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service; 'The Last Time I Saw Richard' BBC Radio 4; 'The Two Gentlemen of Valasna' BBC Radio 3; 'Occasional Offices' BBC Radio 3; King Trash' The Friday Play, BBC Radio 4; 'The Mrichhakatikaa' Drama on 3, BBC Radio 3; 'Shooting Stars' Drama on 3, BBC Radio 3; 'To The Wedding' Drama on 3, BBC Radio 3; 'Fugitive Pieces' Drama on 3, BBC Radio 3; 'Chowringhee' Drama on 3, BBC Radio 3; 'Will It Be a Likeness?' The Sunday Feature, BBC Radio 3’ 'Berlin Project' Between the Ears' BBC Radio 3; A Moment of Mishearing' Between the Ears' BBC Radio 3; 'A Shadow Into The Future' The Sunday Feature, BBC Radio 3; 'When Shura Met Hobey' 20 Minutes, BBC Radio 3; 'Before Your Very Ears!' 11.30 Feature, BBC Radio 4; 'Post-Conflict Stories' BBC World Service.
For more about Roger’s work, click HERE.
REVIEWS FOR MISS JULIE: The Saturday Drama, BBC Radio 4. With Sofie Grabol, Lars Mikkelsen and Marie Bach Hansen. August Strindberg’s stage play re-imagined and adapted for radio by Roger James Elsgood starring Sofie Gråbøl, Lars Mikkelsen and Marie Bach Hansen, recorded on location in Denmark. Directed by Willi Richards. Adapted and produced by Roger James Elsgood
“A shimmering, sexy reimagining of Strindberg’s classic play.” - Gillian Reynolds Sunday Telegraph.
“Roger James Elsgood’s sizzling re-imagining ramps up the sex whilst emphasising themes of gender politics against a backdrop of class warfare. A riveting production that plays with our sympathies as the tension mounts.” - Stephanie Billen. The Observer.
“Anyone who fell in love with Sofie Gråbøl, after her work in ‘The Killing’ or ‘Fortitude’ should have some tranquillisers or a cold bath before listening to this.” - Jane Anderson Radio Times
WRITER PANEL
Roy Williams - see above
Joy Wilkinson
Joy Wilkinson is an award-winning writer, working across radio, theatre, film and television. She has worked with BBC Radio Drama for more than 10 years, on original dramas and adaptations. Highlights include a dramatisation of Fay Weldon’s THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A SHE DEVIL for the Riot Girls strand, an original drama NO TWO DAYS as part of a season on the global oil industry, and a refresh of the Agatha Christie brand, including AND THEN THERE WERE NONE and MISS MARPLE’S FINAL CASES. She has just finished recording DON’T CRY, TAI LAKE, the latest in a series of Inspector Chen Mysteries. Joy’s theatre work has been widely produced and won prizes including the Verity Bargate Award, and she has several feature films and television dramas in development in the UK and US. More info at joywilkinson.net
Claudine Toutoungi
Claudine worked as a radio drama producer for several years and now writes for theatre and radio. Her adaptation of Slipping for radio 4 starred Andrew Scott and Charlotte Riley and was a finalist in the 2015 Audio Drama Awards. Other work as a radio dramatist for Radio 4 includes Deliverers, several seasons of the First World War drama series Home Front, the comedy drama series The Inheritors and a dramatization of Delphine de Vigan’s psychological thriller Based On A True Story. Claudine is developing work for TV and is a widely published poet whose debut poetry collection Smoothie (Carcanet) came out at the end of last year
Shelley Silas
Shelley has just written and recorded series 4 of Val McDermid’s DEAD series for R4 – Dead Weight. Dead Cert, series 5, is in development. She writes extensively for R4, originals and adaptations, including award winning play, I am Emma Humphreys and a 9 part co-adaptation of Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet. Her stage plays have been produced at the Bush (writer-in-residence), Stratford East, Arcola, Southwark Playhouse for Clean Break (writer-in-residence) and at the Soho Theatre for the NYT.
A test piece written for BBC R&D had visuals created and became a VR short, winning awards and being premiered at numerous film festivals including Tribeca, Raindance and the Edinburgh Digital Film Festival.
PODCASTING PANEL
John Wakefield
Goldsmiths alumnus John Wakefield is an audio producer whose work has been nominated for the ARIAS, the APAs, the Prix Europa and won a BBC Audio Drama Award.
Credits include sound design on The Man on the Mountaintop (Audible Studios/ The Story Circle) and direction and production on Wooden Overcoats(Prix Europa Nominee 2016), Rathband (BBC ADA Winner 2018/Fifth Quarter) and Trimble (BBC ADA Finalist 2014).
He directs and produces audiobooks for a range of international publishers and for the RNIB’s Talking Books.
Dave Pickering
Storyteller and podcaster Dave Pickering writes and produces the drama podcast, The Family Tree in partnership with Jen Adamthwaite. He also performs in the show. He’s the host of the weekly conversation podcast Getting Better Acquainted, which won a British Podcast Award in 2017, was nominated for a Radio Production Award in 2012, and has been featured on BBC Radio 4’s In Pod We Trust and Radio 5 Live’sRequired Listening. GBA has also been recommended by The Guardian, Time Out and the Financial Times. In 2015, he made a show about being a man called Mansplaining Masculinity, which he’s adapting into a book that is being published with Unbound. In 2016, he wrote and performed an extension of the show called Liberating Men for BBC Radio 4's Four Thought, which was the Radio Times Pick of the Day. He produces a monthly podcast for the Restart Project, which goes out online and on Resonance FM. For five years, he ran a live night and podcast called Stand Up Tragedy, which aimed to create a safe space to talk about unsafe things. Since 2011, he’s been a member of the Spark London team and he hosts their monthly true storytelling open mic in Hackney. He co-wrote and produced the Cbeebies Radio Series, Ministry of Stories featuring Jenni Murray.
Listen to the Family Tree podcast – a magical realistic dramatic fiction – here, or go to:
http://thefamilytreepodcast.co.uk/
Jen Adamthwaite
Together with Dave Pickering, Jen Adamthwaite is writer and producer of drama podcast, The Family Tree. She is a fiction writer with a particular interest in exploring the world through magical realism. She has written monologues for Stand Up Tragedy and co-produced fiction podcasts for
Rethink Audio. Her short fiction can be found in various literary publications and on the GPS-triggered app experience, Hackney Hear. She is currently seeking representation for her first novel.
You can reach her online at www.jadamthwaite.co.uk and under the Twitter handle @jadamthwaite.
Sarah Golding
Sarah has been the host of The Audio Drama Production Podcast since Jan 2017, organising and enjoying informative interviews with exciting audio professionals who produce, direct, write, voice act, compose for, edit, or act in audio drama.
She has played a plethora of diverse characters in audio drama since 2014. Always keen to play with accents, Sarah can be found enjoying diverse roles as Lizzie in Wynabego Warrior, Drunk Helen in a Scottish Podcast, Sarah in Hostile Worlds, Pam in Subject Found Season 2, Marian in Edict Zero, Lily in The Amelia Project. and Alia in Ancestry.
She organised and produced the first live ADPP Show utilising the community wide ADPP skillbase, culminating in many new original Audio Drama scripts being created specifically for the competition. and produced and performed three of these at Vault Festival 2018 (in collaboration She has written a series of Diary of a Madman and continues to develop several plays for production. She loves auditions way too much...
For more about Sarah, go to:
21ST CENTURY RADIO
Five of the best audio dramas of the 21st century
As part of the Festival, we have chosen five dramas which exemplify the range and quality of audio drama broadcast this century. We chose these pieces not because they are the only great audio plays of this century - but as a way of shining a light on what audio drama has become: highbrow but also popular, hard-hitting, political, challenging, imaginative, and innovative.
Here are the five works chosen, with brief explanations for their inclusion:
DECAMERON NIGHTS (2014), the BBC Radio 3 serialisation of Boccaccio’s Decameron, produced by Jonquil Panting, adapted by Robin Brooks, and introduced by ex-Python Terry Jones. Written in 10 episodes of 15 minutes each and ‘streamed’ across 10 days, this is a unabashedly highbrow and utterly enjoyable classic adaptation of one of the most influential books in world literature, in a version that captivates, intrigues and delights.
The devised drama documentary A FIRE IN THE WEST (2003), created by Michael Butt, and directed by Toby Swift. This tells the true story of a tragic death in a dazzlingly original format. It is a heartrending symphony of grief which deserves to be recognised as a modern classic.
Roy Williams’ crime drama THE INTERROGATION (2012 - present) which for 7 series has stunned and gripped audiences with crime dramas focused around two idiosyncratic detectives, played by Kenneth Cranham and Alex Lanipekun. Roy is undeniably one of the most brilliant writers in contemporary theatre, speaking truth and challenging prejudice in scripts rich in the magnificent eloquence of the street and pub. In THE INTERROGATION he brings all his talents to bear in a uniquely radiophonic approach to the police procedural genre, written in a narrative structure as tightly controlled as a sonnet.
BORDERLAND (2017), a BBC Cymru Wales production which offers a chilling dystopic vision of a ‘Greater Britain,’ consisting of just England and Wales in which desperate refugees attempt to escape a land which has forgotten its humanity, to find some kind of haven in Ireland. Written by Sarah Woods and directed by James Robinson, this stunning drama shows the BBC’s commitment to the making of cutting edge genre thrillers that provoke and challenge yet also offer a rollercoaster emotional experience.
LOST PROPERTY (2011), a trilogy of plays by Katie Hims, which tells the story of a family over three generations, from the evacuation of the children in World War II to the 100th birthday of Alice - who has spent a lifetime lamenting the loss of her daughter - lost through clerical error during evacuation. Winner of Best Drama in the 2011 Audio Awards, this is one of the most moving and emotionally resonant dramas ever broadcast.
PODCASTS
The World of Podcasts
"As audio drama meets podcasting new kinds of stories are being told, stories that are created from different traditions to radio dramas, stories using, developing and challenging the language and conventions of this new medium, taking advantage of its innovations and the unique experiences and opportunities it gives to listeners and creators."
- David Pickering, podcaster
Dave and his collaborator Jen Adamthwaite are part of a wave of new talent that is generating bold new work in one of the most exciting digital media - audio. To listen to the Family Tree podcast – a magical realistic dramatic fiction go HERE.
In addition, podcast panellist Sarah Golding has curated this list of must-hear podcast dramas:
PICK OF THE PODCASTS
BLOOD CULTURAL produced by Lance Dann - a biomedical thriller series.
To listen, click HERE.
WOODEN OVERCOATS Created by David K. Barnes. It’s comedy not drama but we love this wonderful take on the world of funeral directors. Our panellist and Goldsmiths alumnus John Wakefield has directed and produced for this show.
To listen, CLICK HERE.
DEAD LONDON, an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS - a Wireless Theatre Production. Written by Jack Bowman and Robert Valentine and directed by George Maddocks.
To listen CLICK HERE.
THE AUTOPSY. A Wireless Theatre Production written by Gareth Parker and directed by Mariele Runacre Temple. A binaural radio thriller.
To listen, CLICK HERE.
VICTORIOCITY written by Chris Sugden and Jen Sugden and directed by Nathan Peter Grassi. A detective drama set in Victorian London which features ‘an unsolvable murder in an unending city.’
To listen, CLICK HERE.
For more insights on podcasting dramas and comedies from Sarah, check out: