Audio Drama and Modernism traces the development of political and modernist sound drama during the first 40 years of the 20th Century. It demonstrates how pioneers in the phonograph age made significant, innovative contributions to sound fiction before, during, and after the Great War. In stunning detail, Tim Crook examines prominent British modernist radio writers and auteurs, revealing how they negotiated their agitational contemporaneity against the forces of Institutional containment and dramatic censorship. The book tells the story of key figures such as Russell Hunting, who after being jailed for making ‘sound pornography’ in the USA, travelled to Britain to pioneer sound comedy and montage in the pre-Radio age; Reginald Berkeley who wrote the first full-length anti-war play for the BBC in 1925; and D.G. Bridson, Olive Shapley and Joan Littlewood who all struggled to give a Marxist voice to the working classes on British radio.
Table of Content
Chapter 1 Introduction.- Chapter 2 Audio Drama and Modernism—Gordon Lea 1926, the first manifesto.- Chapter 3 Radio Drama and the Avant-Garde—Lance Sieveking 1934, the second manifesto.- Chapter 4 The Modernist Turn in Literature and Radio Studies—how it changes understanding of the history of sound drama.- Chapter 5 Bridging Political Modernism between Descriptive Phonographs, 1920s political BBC radio drama and the 1930s agitational radio features.- Chapter 6 Modernist Phonograph Drama in a Belfast Street and a Montage on War—The sonic genius of Russell Hunting.- Chapter 7 Great War Descriptive Sketches.- Chapter 8 Angels of Mons and the Divine Service for King and Country.- Chapter 9 Are the Sound Drama Phonographs Examples of ‘Modernist’ Propaganda?.- Chapter 10 Reginald Berkeley—Pioneering Modernist Playwright and Political Radio Drama as Agitational Contemporaneity.- Chapter 11 Direct BBC censorship of modernist texts by D.G Bridson and his negotiation with Joan Littlewood and Olive Shapley of ‘institutional containment’.- Chapter 12 Conclusions: Sound drama as political and agitational contemporaneity and modernist expression.
About the author
Professor Tim Crook is an award-winning academic, playwright and journalist who specializes in investigative history projects that have social, political and cultural impact. He has been Head of Radio at Goldsmiths, University of London for 30 years, and President of the Chartered Institute of Journalists.
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