What Can Broadcasting Do

Radio Times, September 7, 1925. SOUTHERN EDITION, JAMES AGATE—SIR NIGEL PLAYFAIR—ST. JOHN ERVINE. aie aa ABEeeOreSy, OOOa a (arn a) Pee ge aU = (ation) (aytaslcoe— J cleos- aDP Pa Ce eal LivEeeGaL SintLay LaeLaAy4 aaet bette ee OETE. Bayt FeLe@ WCE SER Ct Lae PCF RA a LONDON oe. BOaveMoe ptSe Ai er KCNP ieerote 4 Fhe journal of the British Broadcasting Corporation. ——— OS ————————— [i BerSandayred at the - Vol.20.1No.258. Gi, Po) a4 on Ne wapper. | ___ SEPTEMBER7,-1928, Every Friday. Two Pence. — = What Can Broadcasting Do For the Drama: “What the Stage cannot do f o rit,’ answers James Agate in his contribution to our series of articles ‘on Broadcasting and the Future. Mr. Agate believes that the future of Radio Drama lies in a complete severance from the stage play and the stage technique. HAT can broadcasting do for the Enripides with the distress of a primitive drama? At first sicht this seemed motor-car confronted with a hill, Alter to me rather ike asking what wire these two experiences I came to less cant Go for the nighting a l e which pours the cConclosidn -that the listener of out its foli” soul in perfvet indifference, wireless drama about te tam “on I imagine, as to who has or -has not paid lns-loud speaker goes, like Bulky ten ahilli ngs a year to hear its rapturous Bottam, ‘but to sec-a noise qug-jug. S t i l l , wireless “does something for that he-wil hear. <All the nightingale, masmuch a s : it pives “ i t this: is to shy no more publietty—and what bird could be so foolish than that [> arm-.40 as to object to that? Presumably, to, it mich soil for ‘conver- encouraces the nightingale. Or shall we sion, It cannot be stop writing cant and say stmply that that-T-am right and wiule doing nothing whatever for | wireless, that the dramatic @ anaSe the ‘nightingale, does an enormous amount | section of the B.B.C. for those to whom bird-speech is the best is all wrong. TE submit also that-.the last Casca, and .the...ummportant Trebonius of m i i s i c ? 1 will-go farther and say that person who canbe expected to relish seeing : advance their bloody hands and confide wirtless may even teach the town-tweller plays withthe mind's eye is one who already them “go. little confidently into Antony's what the nightingale ‘sounds hke. Per- sees. far .more ‘than he wants with -the erip, Tf we don’t see this, then the thing sonally I had never heard o n e - until a month physical eye. becomes no more than reading aloud. “But ago, when a‘kind might-nurse tumed on my Tt is quite” possible hat since my. early even in bem read to, one wants to see the portable: set t o relieve the nionctony of -a EXpEriEnrs the B.B.C have invented a new reader. ,When- my nurse féad to me as & sleepless night, Tncidentalfy, I thought technique, and if they assure me that. they child she did not-fo behind the scrcen for that both thrush and blackbird beat it haye I will promise again to attend their the purpose. hollow. theatre, “But f simply don't believe that It-seems to me that the first thing the What can wireless do for the drama? In there 15 any aural equivalent for King witless drama must do is to get hold: of other words, what is the pood of ‘wireless Lear's beard or George Robey's eyebrows, exquisite speakers who are not. actors. in plays 7° OL wireless plays: T° speak “with for gesture; gait, faci:‘l expression, and the the ordinary. sense, but actors-for the woice the. authority proper ( o “alnisst complete thovsand-and-one thines: which po to make only. Then; arain,- it must avoid: -dealing ignorance, 1 remember listening. to an early up the visual action of the stage. When with subjects- the essence of which is ‘that wireless play in whith “a. seldier in the Antony Says i— they. must be scen-rather than leard. And trenches was heard shaving, while a t the Lot enoman: render ano his bloody honed: by seen. T mean, seen on the stage proper, Bame tine ‘lootsteps were heard approach- iteis, to omy way of thinking, essential To see a band of conspirators shaking ing-through lush grass. I remember listen- that- we Shall see Marcus. Brutus, Carus hands with one another is a feasrble thine, Ing t e Miss Sybil Thorndike panting forth Cassius, Decis Brutus, Metellus, Cinna. (Continusd ooarleas) 4 RADIO. TIMES Beerewuen TF, ees and we are annoyed, or at least I am the Lady of the Camellias totters to the _ two anda half, please!’ and then twe annoyed, when over the wireless I cant window, loud tinkles followed bya little one, see it done. But there are a number of Now and again I get letters from people There seems to me to be no limit to what things which on the stage are t o t a l l y and dwelling in the Macpihicuddy Reeks, in the the wireless can do so long as it proceeds completely infeasible, and it occurs to me Mull of Kintyre, in the remoter parts of along the lines of sugeestion rather than these that i n the domain of the stage-unactable Kettering, saying how much they have of representation, But. 1 believe with the the wireless may be able to do for the enjoyed a wireless drama, how many miles complete fulness of belief that it must get sar what the cinerna already does for the they are from the theatre, and> how much away. from the idea of vision, just as I eye. the wireless dramaamnakes theny want to go to believe that the film is doomed the moment The point 1s that each: mcm nust the theatre... In myview, that is utterly artd it starts coquetting with sound. The other find its proper m a t e r i a l , Neither the screen absurdly wrong. The only wireless drama day I attended an exhibition in which film nor the wireless can: begin te reproduce that which is going to content me is ene which and gramophone were, alas!) synchronized. moment in A Doll's Hows whem, im the makes me realize that, though I cam amy As yet T can but guess at the herrors which darkening room, Dy. Rank makes his eveumge have my pick of forty theatres, await the filmgeer, Want of the peality of declaration te Nera, and Nera, sayme: none of them can give me fe find of emotion those horrors: there cam be no debt, Nat ‘Let me pass, please!" goes to the door and whieh the wireless drama gives me through /@ven the Los Angeles mind cam harm: the calls for the lamp, But neither cam the the ether. This means the masme ofthe Pacific Oceam whem it photographsits hero theatre evem begin to deal with the matter status of the wireless drama, which will no and: hemine beholding that noble expanse. of a film like Wings or with, the material longer be a ment-best, thing replacing fir But [ view with alarm and’ trepidation the of such a story as Conrad’s ‘Typhoon.’ I dwellers in the Wash and in Blaenau- cay when we shall- Azar what the Los Angeles seom to see faintly the possibilities of Festiniog the theatre to which they cannot mind thinks about the passion which en- ‘Typhoon’ .as a wiréless drama. Indeed, I pet, Tt will be a theatre in its own mght. circles the globe and the water which covers would set no limit t o what, when once the The moment my friends of the dramatic three-fifths of i t . Or put it this way: The wireless drama has found its line, it may be section of the B.B.C. tell me that wireless film-mind cannot vulgarize Nature: it only able to do in that line, But [ amsure that drama of thts order has begun to come into begins t o be vulgar when it begins t o think there i s . one thing which it must not do, existence, I shall be its devoted dave, But aloud about Nature, The B.B.C. is i n no and that is to compete. with the stage j 1 wilt not listen to a chrawing-room comedy in such danger. I t thinks admirably, and the on .-the lines along which the stare | which the Lady Vinoelia asks Lord Shavallo visual things it conjures wp in connection is supremely perfect. Tt must not tryto | whether he takes two lumps of sugar or with that thinking. can never be ular, tell those who saw Sarah Bernhardt bow three, and you hear first his Lordshp’s James AGATE, = a ——— Sir Nigel P l a y f a i r , Famous Theatrical Producer, on My Ideal Hour of Broadcasting, with theearphones or before the. loud speaker amusement. But that ishecause ofmy calling, will always. to my choice be largely taken up and cannot apply to many other people, with descriptions of those happenings which No; for me as I am, my hour must ail I like to witness -vicariously—boat. races, be bangs and surprises; nothing, or nearly Steeplechasing, travels. and explorations, nothing, just pretty and soothing. and a hundred other things of the kind. Tt must suddenly—yes—be Mr.

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