Category Drama 2024

1. Gone are the Likes of Benya Krik

Country: Croatia

Category: Drama

Title: Gone are the Likes of Benya Krik

Company: Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) / Croatian Radio (HR)

Author: Maja Ležaić, based on the motifs from Isaak Babel's short stories

Producer: Lada Martinac-Kralj

Director: Petar Vujačić

Sound engineer: Dalibor Piskrec

Other key staff: Maro Market, composer

Language: Croatian

Length: 38:35

Summary

Young Croatian writer Maja Ležaić gave an offer for the sonic tapestry based upon the tales from Isaak Babel's youth Odessa. In the same manner as Babel, in his „Tales from Odessa“ blends vertiginous rise of the local villains, cruelty, Pogroms and unusual love stories, this tapestry takes everything abovementioned, but the plot follows young Benya Krik who, trying to evade pogroms hides among the bandits; and from crime and blood escapes into his own mind.

Despite all his wits, he won't keep his hands clean, nor escape the nightmare of Pogrom.

This soundscape trembles between reality and dream, and fear and terror.

2. Mr Theodor Mundstock

Country: Czech Republic

Category: Drama

Title: Pan Theodor Mundstock

Title in English: Mr Theodor Mundstock

Company: Czech Radio

Author(s): Ladislav Fuks, Lenka Veverková

Producer: Zuzana Sikačová

Director: Aleš Vrzák

Sound engineer(s): Jan Trojan, Tomáš Pernický

Other key staff: Vladimír Javorský - main actor

Language: Czech

Length: 59:42

Summary

This dramatization of a psychological novel takes listeners inside the mind of a lonely Jew living during World War II. With growing fear, every day he awaits his summons for a transport to a concentration camp. Before the war, Mr. Theodor Mundstock was a respected man, now he is lonely and desperate. The fear of an uncertain future has become a part of his daily life. Mundstock has even invented a certain shadow that constantly haunts him. Until he discovers his own method to prepare for a harsh future. Fuks in his novel depicts the changes in the psychological state of a man driven by society and his own fear. The radio treatment offers an audio presentation of what goes on inside someone's head. The multi-layered binaural sound helps the listener to experience the world through the protagonist, or rather his inner thoughts, and feel the turmoil going on inside him. The external world emerges more in some moments, less in others, but what is important is what is going on in the soul of the protagonist, who is pulled by circumstances or his own commands. Although the plot is set in the past, it appears to be a reminder of our present fears as well and a warning of what they can bring out in a person. Lenka Veverková wrote the radio dramatization of the Ladislav Fuks novel of the same name.

3. Tracks

Country: Germany

Category: Drama

Title: Pisten

Title in English: Tracks

Company: NDR

Author: Penda Diouf

Producer(s): Michael Becker

Director: Christi ne Nagel

Sound engineer: TiTo

Other key staff: Acting: Abak Safaei-Rad and others

Language: German

Length: 60:00

Summary

Actor and playwright Penda Diouf travelled to Namibia in search of her own memories but stumbled across a forgotten genocide – the first of the 20th century – committed by the German colonial army against the Herero and Nama peoples in German South West Africa between 1904 and 1908. “Life in the desert no longer tastes the same. They desecrated the graves and stole the skulls of the murdered. They left their humanity on the ship because they were sure they didn’t need it here in the desert.” Penda Diouf’s text pays homage to the victims of this genocide and to its heroes. It also reveals the situati ons to subsequent generations who must come to terms with the fact that legality and justice cannot be restored. In May 2021, the both countries announced that an agreement has been reached in which Germany recognizes the atrociti es committed against the Herero and Nama peoplein the early 1900s as genocide. The German government pledged to spend €1.1 billion over 30 years for infrastructure and development aid in Namibia. The payments do not include reparations. But the debate continues. Penda Diouf, born in 1981, runs language workshops in the south of France, writes libretti for operas and is the director of the library in the notorious city of St. Denis, which is part of the suburbs of Paris. A few years ago she founded the ‘Jeunes Textes en Liberté’ format, which promotes authors who advocate a greater variety of narrati ves and performances on the stage.

4. MIXING MEMORY & DESIRE I

Country: Germany

Category: Drama

Title: MIXING MEMORY & DESIRE I

Company: SWR

Author(s): Werner Fritsch

Producer(s): Manfred Hess, SWR

Director: Werner Fritsch

Sound engineer: Christi an Eickhoff , SWR

Language: German

Length: 60'

SummaryMIXING MEMORY & DESIRE I is the beginning of a series of autobiographical radio plays… Evoking memories of early childhood on the countryside. With old tales & legends & childhood fantasies… With church rituals & the desire to become a Saint: Saint Werner. 1968 he fights the Russian tanks, coming over the Border to Bavaria, just by showing the Holy Christ on the cross...

5. #Antigone

Country: Ireland

Category: Drama

Title: #Antigone

Company: Colin Murphy

Author: Colin Murphy

Producer: Colin Murphy

Director: Aoife Spillane-Hinks

Sound engineer: Simon Kenny

Other key staff: Simon Kenny, sound design

Language: English

Length: 45'30

Summary

#Antigone is a rewrite of the Sophocles play, set in a dystopian alternative Ireland in which the worst fears of the Covid pandemic have been realised. This is the story of a body too toxic to be buried, a State afraid of a funeral, a people under siege, a city under curfew, a collapse in political authority, and a conflict between loyalty to family and duty to state. Plague is ravaging Europe. Refugees are arriving on Ireland's shores in small boats. General Críon, fi rst female head of the Irish armed forces, has just seized power in a coup. She gives her troops licence to turn back refugee boats at sea and shoot new migrants arriving on Irish shores, under the pretext that they may be carrying contagion. She orders that the dead bodies not be touched, for fear of infecti on. Críon's son, Éamon, is an aid worker in a refugee camp, and is engaged to a refugee, Antigone. When Antigone's brother's body washes up on the beach, Antigone insists on burying him, despite Críon's edict. Antigone's sister, a resident in the refugee camp, begs her not to do it, but Antigone goes ahead, and posts a video of the burial on social media. She is arrested and imprisoned. But as social order breaks down, the public are moved by Antigone's plight, and Éamon falls out with his mother. Críon recants, but it is too late: Antigone has taken her own life. But instead of this moving Críon to sorrow and regret, it stiffens her resolve, and she moves entirely into autocracy.

6. The Sister of Job

Country: Poland

Category: Drama

Title: Siostra Hioba

Title in English: The Sister of Job

Company: Polish Radio Theatre

Author: Marta Rebzda

Producer(s): Beata Jankowska

Director: Waldemar Modestowicz

Sound engineer: Maciek Kubera

Other key staff: Piotr Moss - composer

Language: Polish

Length: 53'56"

Summary

Barbara Sadowska was a poet. The events of March 1968 and December 1970 determined her oppositi on acti viti es. On May 12, 1983, Grzegorz (her son) and his classmates went to the Old Town to celebrate their high school graduati on. At Castle they were stopped by the police. Grzegorz had no documents. He was chastised by police officers at a nearby police station. It was not possible to save him. The investigation lasted a year. The testimonies of two hundred witnesses are collected in twelve volumes of files. A year was enough to strip away the credibility of key witnesses, cover up leads, and find paramedics who pleaded guilty to a wrongful act. Barbara was defamed and discredited. She was fading away. She died in 1986. "For me, there were two Barbaras. One I remember unti l Grzegorz died, and then there was Barbara radically different. It was as if her heart, her brain, everything had been ripped apart. There was not much in the latter of the former. One time Barbara slept in her room, I slept in Grzegorz's room. I had not witnessed any of her manifestations of pain before that moment, and at night she came to me, cuddled into me and howled and howled. Just like a bitch who returns to an empty nest.There are no words for such a situation. One could only hug her and be - Marta Kucharska said in reporters' recordings. The drama not only in its title but also in its structure, individual parts and characters refers to the poem "The Book of Job," one of the books of the Bible.

7. The Unawakened

Country: Slovakia

Category: Drama

Title: Neprebudený/í

Title in English: The Unawakened

Company: Radio and Television Slovakia (RTVS)

Author(s): Ivana Kováčiková; Martin Buzalka

Producer(s): Valéria Potančoková

Director: Ivana Kováčiková

Sound engineer: Peter Pištek

Other key staff: Peter Pavlac - dramaturgy; Katarína Bielčíková - musical dramaturgy

Language: Slovak

Length: 32'56"

Summary

The Unawakened is a dramatic radio storytelling inspired by the texts by Martin Kukučín, Jozef Hollý, Ľudmila Podjavorinská, Jozef Gregor Tajovský and Martin Buzalka. It is not a typical radio play, as we know it. It is neither a documentary, nor a feature or interview. Nevertheless, it can be surely considered an exceptional artistic encounter in the form of narration and playing with texts by the abovementioned classics, as well as by Marti n Buzalka, one of the outstanding members of the theatre ensemble Stopy snov. The author and director Ivana Kováčiková (winner in the Forum category at the Radio Drama Festi val 2023 with the play Litt le Lady) uses a highly inventive and empathic approach to allow us immerse in the world where at the end we are actually those who remain unawaken. The world of genuine pleasure from creation and desire to make life dreams come true. In the Stopy snov theatre which engages actors and creators with various forms of mental disabilities, we focus on search after stories and issues that are of personal nature for each ensemble member. We also applied this principle when selecting the texts by Slovak classics, which in some way deal with the life of disadvantaged people from the Slovak rural environment. At the same time, these texts represent one of the basic pillars of the Slovak realist literature, aimed at depicting social minoriti es and critically viewing the milieu, confronted with the distinctiveness of the particular individuals.

8. LORCA AS A DREAM

Country: Spain

Category: Drama

Title: LORCA AS A DREAM

Company: Chuse Fernandez

Author: Chuse Fernandez

Producer: Chuse Fernandez

Director: Chuse Fernandez

Sound engineer: Chuse Fernandez

Length: 23'31''

Summary

Creating this sound composition based on Federico García Lorca's texts involves a careful fusion of elements that capture the essence of his poetry, his cultural influences, and the emotional depth of his work. 

9. Danger

Country: Switzerland

Category: Drama

Title: Danger

Company: SRG / SSR - RSI

Author(s): Flavio Stroppini / from the play by Richard Hughes

Producer: Francesca Giorzi

Director: Flavio Stroppini

Sound engineer: Yuri Ruspini

Other key staff: Antonio Ballerio, Igor Horvat, Margherita Coldesina, Davide Garbolino, Matteo Carassini

Language: Italian

Length: 24:58

Summary

DANGER The first radio drama in history, 100 years later from the play by Richard Hughes translation, adaptation and direction by Flavio Stroppini England. 15 January 1924. It is 7.30 p.m. On the radio, the BBC, the announcer asks the listeners to turn off the lights, to close the shutt ers, to try to stay in the dark. Because what they would hear shortly afterwards... would have been something extraordinary. Something that if staged in a theatre would have needed an unlit stage. Only voices would have been heard. Before that moment no one had att empted such an experiment. Thus the radio drama was born. The title of this fi rst play was 'Danger', the author a 24-year-old Englishman, Richard Hughes. The plot? In a mine the lights go out, three visitors try to understand what is happening. Then the collapses begin and the water starts to rise…. One hundred years later we celebrate the fi rst radio drama by by proposing a particular version... A lot has changed in a hundred years. For audio storytellers, acting and technology have changed. And so it is that during the listening session (recommended with headphones) we go back in time to the present day. From acti ng, to technology, going from mono to stereo and fi nally to binaural, 3D audio. Here we are, one hundred years later... Happy birthday radio drama! And if you can, turn off the lights!

10. London After Midnight

Country: United Kingdom

Category: Drama

Title: London After Midnight

Company: AudioMarvels® / Pocket Universe Productions / Monket Basket Productions

Author(s): Lance Roger Axt & Kenton Hall, based on the 1927 screenplay by Waldemere Young

Producer(s): Jack Bowman, Lance Roger Axt & Kenton Hall

Director(s): Jack Bowman & Kenton Hall

Sound engineer(s): Wilfredo Acosta (Studio Engineer), Rory O'Shea (Sound Design and Dolby Atmos Mixing)

Other key staff: Dialogue Edit by Lance Roger Axt - Original Music by Kenton Hall & Brett Richardson - Associate Producer, Liis Mikk

Language: English (UK)

Length: 57''

Summary

Set in the 1920s LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT is part murder mystery, part vampire thriller and part gothic ghost story as businessman Sir James Hamlin seeks to uncover the identities of the tenants living in the Balfour Mansion, long neglected since the suicide of Roger Balfour five years earlier. When all indications point to the tenants being vampires connected with that horrible night, a Scotland Yard detective Edward Burke arrives to uncover the truth… which leads to a mystery of a very different kind…

Old Text, Revisited: LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT is an audio drama reimagining what is considered the Holy Grail of lost Silent-era features. The last known copy of this mythical 1927 film was destroyed in the 1965 MGM Vault Fire, leaving only the original silent screenplay text and a few surviving production images. Taking just that surviving text, Axt & Hall began a painstaking process of adapting it as a full-cast radio drama, using the power of audio to restore a lost piece of global cultural heritage for the first time in nearly a century. In addition to moving a historical silent screenplay text to spoken word, this production also looks to the future, with its use of Dolby Atmos mix and progressive casting. Cast: Art Malik as Inspector Burke, Dan Starkey as Sir James, Beth Eyre as Lucy, Kenton Hall as Hibbs, David K Barnes, David Bickerstaff, Jack Bowman, Cliff Chapman, Sarah Dorsett, Karim Kronfli Abi McLoughlin and Sally Walker-Taylor narrating.

11. All-American Ruins: Isabel and the Allentown Mafia

Country: United States of America

Category: Drama

Title: All-American Ruins: Isabel and the Allentown Mafia

Company: All-American Ruins

Author: Blake Pfeil

Producer: Blake Pfeil

Sound engineer: Blake Pfeil

Other key staff: starring Isabel Wilder

Language: English

Length: 19:15

Summary

All-American Ruins is an award-winning multimedia travelog that recounts my experiences exploring abandoned spaces through multi modal storytelling. The cornerstone piece of the project is the immersive podcast series, ‘abandoned,’ which guides listeners through fantasti cal audio adventures in which I recreate my expediti ons to the ruins of America. Blurring the line between ficti on and reality, I guide folks through both the physical spaces and my imagination; I aim to activate the listener’s own imagination as a tool for healing. This selecti on follows my trek to a dream-scaped mafi a hideout, a milk factory full of phantoms, where we meet a curious, ghostly plant manager named Victor. Alongside my sister-from-another-mother, Isabel, join me as I embark on a mysterious trip to the abandoned Lehigh Valley Dairy where I ponder friendship, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and the dark side of the imagination.