Playing with Voices: an Analysis of Tom Stoppard's Radio Plays
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Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue e Letterature Europee, Americane e Postcoloniali Joint Master’s Degree in English and American Studies Tesi di Laurea Playing with Voices: an Analysis of Tom Stoppard’s Radio Plays Relatore Prof.ssa Loretta Innocenti Correlatore Prof. Christoph Houswitschka Laureanda Francesca Camporese Matricola 823888 Anno Accademico 2012/2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis supervisor Prof. Loretta Innocenti, Professor of English Literature at Ca’ Foscari University, for her guidance and monitoring throughout the course of this thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank my assistant supervisor, Prof. Christoph Houswitschka, Professor of English Literature at the University of Bamberg, and Prof. Daniel Jean, Associate Professor of English Literature at Université Paris Diderot, for his support and suggestions, which greatly helped me in the initial stage of my research project. I am obliged to Prof. Pia Masiero, manager of the Joint Master’s Degree in English and American Studies at Ca’ Foscari, and to Elisa Gamba, International Relations Officer at Ca’ Foscari, for their invaluable help and patience. Finally, I would like to thank my loved ones for their unconditional support and constant encouragement, without which this thesis would not have been possible. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................. 4 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................ 6 CHAPTER 1 – The origins and evolution of Radio Drama......................................................... 10 1.1 - Radio drama as a British art............................................................................................ 10 1.2 - The impact of new technological innovations: the “Golden Age of Radio”................... 11 1.3 - Radio drama as a gateway for the stage: its role in Tom Stoppard’s career ................... 14 1.4 - The characteristic features of the radio drama format .................................................... 17 CHAPTER 2 – The representation of time and space in an aural medium.................................. 24 2.1 - Methodology: a semiotic approach ................................................................................. 24 2.2 - The flexibility of time ..................................................................................................... 28 Artist Descending a Staircase ................................................................................................. 30 2.3 - A circular temporal structure .......................................................................................... 30 2.4 - Metaradio: a reflection on interpreting aural signs ......................................................... 33 2.5 - ‘Back’ to the ending: the characters trapped in a loop.................................................... 40 Where Are They Now? ............................................................................................................ 42 2.6 - Jumping forward and backward in time.......................................................................... 42 2.7 - Evoking different places through sound ......................................................................... 47 The Dissolution of Dominic Boot ............................................................................................ 52 In The Native State .................................................................................................................. 54 2.8 - Conclusion....................................................................................................................... 59 CHAPTER 3 – The Theatre of the Mind ..................................................................................... 60 3.1 - Radio: a visual medium?................................................................................................. 60 ‘M’ Is For Moon Among Other Things ................................................................................... 63 If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank.................................................................................................... 67 On ‘Dover Beach’.................................................................................................................... 71 CHAPTER 4 – Visuality and Perspectives .................................................................................. 78 4.1 - The use of blindness as dramatic device......................................................................... 78 4.2 - The use of visual images................................................................................................. 82 The Dog It Was That Died....................................................................................................... 84 Albert’s Bridge ........................................................................................................................ 88 4.3 - From the air to the stage: In The Native State and Indian Ink......................................... 92 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 99 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................ 102 3 ABSTRACT This paper takes into consideration the so-called ‘minor works’ written for the radio by one of the most celebrated contemporary playwrights of our time, Tom Stoppard, with the purpose of showing the enormous potential of a dramatic format which has often been neglected by critics and which is not likely to receive so much scholarly attention as traditional drama. The first part provides the reader with an introductory background to the evolution of radio drama, outlining the main features that characterise this particular dramatic genre, in an attempt to discuss its limitations and its points of strength. In the following chapters, I proceed with a detailed analysis of Stoppard’s output for the radio, consisting of ten radio plays to date, conducted from a semiotic perspective: the aim of the present study is not only to focus on the recurring motifs in Stoppard’s radio plays, but to highlight the different techniques used by the playwright in order to convey his message to the audience through an exclusively aural medium. In the second chapter, I discuss two closely related aspects, analysing how the temporal and the spatial dimensions are represented respectively in Artist Descending a Staircase (1972), Where Are They Now? (1970), The Dissolution of Dominic Boot (1964), and In The Native State (1991). The third chapter is dedicated to another characteristic feature of radio drama, namely its capability to follow the mind’s movements and express the inner thoughts of a character, a technique that is present in different forms in the plays The Dog It Was That Died (1982), ‘M’ is for Moon Among Other Things (1964), If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank (1966), and On ‘Dover Beach’ (2007). Finally the fourth and last chapter presents some passages from Albert’s Bridge (1967) and other plays, focusing on how Stoppard has paradoxically found in radio a privileged medium to explore the 4 theme of the relativity of perspective and to address the subject of the visual. Lastly, the chapter ends tackling the problem of the transposition from a sound-based medium like radio to a visual one, offering a brief comparative study of In The Native State and Indian Ink (1995), the adaptation for the stage written by Stoppard of one of his most successful radio plays. The study shows how Stoppard’s masterful use of radio has produced some unique dramatic effects that cannot be reproduced on the stage without involving a considerable loss in meaning and incisiveness, thus effectively demonstrating that radio drama does possess a distinct artistic identity. In addition, experimenting with this dramatic format contributed to Stoppard’s growth as a playwright, as it allowed him to explore several themes and techniques that he further developed in his stage plays; Stoppard’s radio plays demonstrate not only that indeed it is possible to craft a form of theatre exclusively for the ear, but that radio drama can still represent a stimulating dramatic format nowadays. 5 INTRODUCTION It is no mystery to the modern public that drama can be produced through different media, yet when we think about ‘drama’ we still tend to instinctively associate this concept to that of ‘theatre’, overlooking the fact that in our time in most societies of the world, with a very few exceptions, various forms of dramatic performances enter people’s everyday life through electronic mass media such as television, cinema and – in more recent years – even the web. There is at least one more medium that could be added to this list, whose absence would very probably go unnoticed since it no longer enjoys the same popularity it had during the last century: indeed radio still has an important role in our culture, but surely enough it is not the first thing that comes to our minds when we think of literature and drama. Val Gielgud, who was a senior drama producer at the BBC and a key figure in the history of British radio drama, perceived the contrast stemming from the idea of drama applied to a sound- only medium, and formulated