Category Drama 2022

1. Belgium/Radio Télévision Suisse and Radio Télévision Belge Francophone
DEAD MEMORY CLINIC - Episode 1

Original title: Clinique de la mémoire morte

Author/Director: Sebastian Dicenaire
Sound Engineers: Pierre Devalet, Héléna Réveillère, Anne Lepère, Gérald Wang
Other key staff: Mathieu Haessler (editing consultant)
Sound effects: Elias Vervecken
Original language: French
Length: 16’4’’

Say goodbye to memory blanks, to hazy recollections, and to classroom learning going in one ear and out the other! From now on, anyone can remember everything, thanks to technology perfected by Mnemosan. Hippolyte Polycarpe works at the Dead memory clinic. He spends his days re-implanting the memories of patients who have memory problems. Though passionate and dedicated to his work, when a hopeless case presents at the Clinic, he eventually crosses the line...

2. Germany/Deutschlandfunk Kultur/SWR
OTAKU NATION

Original title: Otaku Nation

Author/ Director: Udo Moll
Producers: Udo Moll / SWR (Frank Halbig) / DLF (Marcus Gammel)
Sound engineer: Eva Pöpplein
Original language: German
Length: 50’04’’

The image of the quiet, noble Japanese disciplining himself in Zen aesthetics shows at most half the truth. There are manifold zones of noise in Japanese everyday life, a childlike joy in loud expressions of life. A very special subcategory of Japanese noise is formed by the emissions of a national passion: playing.

When you enter a pachinko hall, you are immediately submerged in a maelstrom of infernal noise, most of the machines still work electromechanically, thousands of small steel balls are played with, rattling through the machines. Whining announcements about jackpots and prize distributions increase the acoustic density. But even the classic arcades with video game consoles are not bad at all: a lot of whining, tinny explosions, death cries, electronic 8-bit tootling, penetrating game music.

This Inferno, which is painted in an intricate collage of field recordings, is then contrasted and balanced with a quiet and somber historical text from 1890, where Lafcadio Hearn describes the romantic double suicide of unhappily loving, mostly adolescent couples (Shinju) and which is very poetically exaggerated.

Also the early Nintendo and Sega games from the 80s have their own unique sound, and with very limited technical resources and a reduced sound palette, the developers were surprisingly creative. In addition, algorithms from historical speech synthesis chips are allowed to sing.

3. Germany/Reinhard Karger
BY DAY AND NIGHT

Original title: bei tag und nacht

Authors: Franz Kafka
Producer/Director/Sound Engineer: Reinhard Karger
Original language: German
Length: 11’13’’

Acoustic composition by Reinhard Karger based on a text by Franz Kafka.

The text from Kafkas short story „Der Bau“ tells us about an animal (something between fox and mole probably...) that has built a wonderful subterranean labyrinth and feels perfectly at home in his self-made building. There is only one problem: The labyrinth has two entrances and he cannot guard both of them at the same time, so he is in permanent panic someone would enter his house without him noticing (but nobody will ever try to enter his kingdom...) This emotional state of being threatened without reason seemed to me like a fitting description of our time (someone wants to steel my money... the Muslims are taking over all power... the immigrants take away our jobs...). The sound material consists only of the whispered text and some noises - various compositional procedures transform text and sound into a world of nervous tiredness and sleepless brooding. Here is the text fragment that was used:

"Regelmäßig von Zeit zu Zeit schrecke ich auf aus tiefem Schlaf und lausche, lausche in die Stille, die hier unverändert herrscht bei Tag und Nacht, lächle beruhigt und sinke zurück in noch tieferen Schlaf."

„Regularly from time to time I am startled out of deep sleep and listen, listen into the silence reigning here by day and night, I smile relieved and sink back in even deeper sleep“.

4. Germany/Jean-Claude Kuner
FIRE

Original title: Feuer

Author: Robert Walser
Producer/Director: Jean-Claude Kuner
Sound Engineer: Peter Avar
Other key staff: Dmitri Kourliandsky, composer
Original language: German
Length: 48’16’’

The text FIRE (published as an article in the Berliner Tageblatt on 17 April 1908) by Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956) has been only rediscovered in 2003. In his text Walser creates a poetic reflection of modern life in a cityscape full of movement and noise.

A night in a big city. It is quiet. People are wasting their time with nothing. The narrator is on his way to somewhere together with a companion. He makes observations about the city and the behavior of people. The metropolitan city seems to him like an impenetrable forest of people and buildings.

Suddenly something changes. A catastrophe interrupts the boredom and lethargic mood of this evening. The streets start to get lively and into motion. A fire has broken out. People are running to the scene, watching and staring, being horrified and fascinated at the same time. The noises, the change in architecture caused by the blaze and the flurry of sparks from embers and ashes. More and more people are now gathering and experience a feeling of belonging together in their shared amazement of the spectacle. The "catastrophe" lures them out of their self-isolation. Strangers begin to feel common ground in the face of the horror and start communicating with each other.

The experience of time is also changing and takes on a new dimension. Time, which has been so habitually plodding along, suddenly becomes tense and interesting. Like in a dream, time is intensified and condensed.

Though the fascination with what is happening is only short-lived. Just as quickly as the excitement has appeared, raising real hopes for a change, as quickly it vanishes and disappears again. Boredom returns and normality reigns the city once more. The narrator concludes his observations with a sobering outlook on his fellow human beings.

5. Germany/Werner Cee
ISOLATION REVISITED

Original title: ISOLATION Revisited

Author/Producer/Director/Sound Engineer: Werner Cee
Original language: English
Length: 33’22’’

The piece’s backbone is the Winter Journey by Franz Schubert/lyrics by Wilhelm Müller from 1827.

This is the icon of „resignation“. The wanderer flees the company of other people among whom he no longer feels at home. There is an associated movement today, especially in the U.S., known as the „Big Resignation“: People resign from their jobs, people turn away from a life within restrictions set up by modern society and look for new meanings in life.

The bubonic plague hit medieval society hard. The way the disastrous situation was handled, according to historical documentation, looks helpless or even absurd in our eyes.

At present, humanity is confronted with a similar situation.

As many efforts to „isolate“ from the virus are undertaken, high security (S4) laboratories, bringing forward the necessity of outpacing possible viral mutations, are working at enhancing the virus‘ aggressiveness. These laboratories constitute places that have to be absolutely, perfectly cut off from our world. In the composition „Isolation revisited“, these three historical layers interact. There is the medieval character of religious processions (field recordings from Italy and Spain), there are modern electronic and electric sounds, fragments from compositions by Beethoven and Schubert as well as the noise character of musique concrète. As well as triggering mental images and associations, they establish the ties between medieval times, romanticism and presence.

6. Germany/Christoph Korn
JOB FALLS SILENT

Original title: HIOBS VERSTUMMEN

Author/Director: Christoph Korn
Producers: Südwestrundfunk (radio play), supported by Kunststiftung NRW. Made possible by the CityARTist Award NRW 2020
Sound Engineers: Tanja Hiesch, Christian Eickhoff
Other key staff: Caroline Junghanns (performer), Manfred Hess (dramaturgy), Tanja Hiesch, Christian Eickhoff (sound and technology), Christoph Korn, Claas Morgenroth (libretto and concept), Georg Jesdinsky, Big7.net (web programming) Filmschere, Düsseldorf (video realization)
Original language: German
Length: 37'

The audio play „Job Falls Silent“ takes its starting point from the Book of Job, as it is handed down to us in the First Testament and in the Jewish Tanach. 

In this book, the framework describes how God tests Job's faithfulness with severe suffering. God punishes Job despite his righteous life. Facing how inconceivable this injustice is, Job cries out against God and finally falls successively silent in the literary figures of the text. In the radio play, the process of successive silencing is made audible in the Job monologue as an increasing process of desyntactization/desemantization. In his way, Job, who ends up slurring his words, emerges as a hero who asserts his inviolable autonomy in choosing to deprive himself of language.

7. Germany/Hessischer Rundfunk
XERXES

Original title: Xerxes

Author: Magda Woitzuck

Producers: hr/ORF 2021

Director: Peter Kaizar

Sound Engineers: Peter Kaizar, Anna Kuncio and Manuel Radinger

Other key staff: Stefanie Zussner (cast)

Assistant Directors: Julia Herzog and Teresa Schwind

Direction: Peter Kaizar

Dramaturgy & Editing: Leonhard Koppelmann (hr), Kurt Reissnegger (ORF)

Original language: German

Length: 58’56’’

In the year 519 b.c. a boy is born whose name will be known for millennia: Xerxes. He will stand out for a lot of his acts and atrocities, but also the fact that the names of the women surrounding him are known to this day – all but an in implicitness in history. An archeologist is excavating and while doing so she tells us about Xerxes, his life and loved ones. Like casting a stone over water, her story unfolds through the centuries towards the present: from the crucification of Christ to the apocalyptical outbreak of the plague in 1347, from the discovery of

America to the banning of women from church choirs. It is that banishment the testicles of thousands and thousands of boys will fall victim to. Henceforth the voices of soprano castrates must not be missed in any opera, so as in the one with the title „Xerxes“ by Georg Friedrich Händel, whose aria „Ombra mai fu“ has written radio history on the brink to the 20th century.

8. Poland/Polish Radio Theatre
STILL IN THE WORLD, YET NOT OF THIS WORLD

Original title: Na świecie jeszcze, lecz już nie dla świata

Author: Jerzy Machowski - Inspired by Adam Mickiewicz poetry

Producer: Beata Jankowska

Director: Jerzy Machowski

Sound Engineer: Maciej Kubera

Other key staff: Ignacy Zalewski (composer)

Original language: Polish

Length: 41’46’’

The drama has mosaic structure, combining excerpts from the works of Poland’s most eminent poet, Adam Mickiewicz. The key for selecting them had been the word “corpse” often used by the artist. Each of the texts used speaks of the subject in a different manner, talking of the dead and their relations with the living. Inside the drama, we find three independent entities – adaptation of the ballad entitled “Lilies”, the “Ghoul” monologue and a staging of the “Rest at Upita” poem. They are bound together by sung sections: a prologue and intermezzos drawn from “Dziady” [“Forefather’s Eve”], Mickiewicz’s opus magnum. Meanwhile the epilogue is based on the “Lyrical poems of Lausanne”.

The frame of the narration is provided by the pagan ritual of Dziady, i.e. a meeting of the living with the dead. According to the tradition, the ritual was led by a wizard. In this drama, the ritual takes musical form while the Wizard is played by an actress-vocalist.

9. Serbia/RTS, Radio Belgrade
ADVENTURER IN A CAGE

Original title: Pustolov u kavezu

Authors: Rastko Petrović and Vesna Perić

Producer: Melina Pota Koljević

Director: Szablcs Tolnai

Sound Engineer: Zoran Uzelac

Other key staff: Marija Ćirić, Nataša Šuljagić

Original language: Serbian

Length: 43’01’’

Rastko Petrović (1898 – 1949) was a Yugoslav and Serbian poet, painter and novelist, whose works represent avant-guarde literature. As a young man he took part in WWI. His traumatic experience of exhausting retreat with Serbian Army to the Mediterranean sea is described in his novel „Day Sixth“. After the war he studied in Paris where he meets Apollinaire, Picasso and James Joyce. In his poems he captures the ambivalence of primordial powers of life and destructive modern civilization. He was also intrigued by complex relation between female and male principle.

This drama mosaic is dealing with different kind of innocence, as it is found in the poet's works. The drama starts with the poet reflecting on the innocence of a child who has just come out of the mother's womb. Then we discover the innocence of the childhood’s language, when the poet creates new words while playing with the language itself. The poet develops his quest for the innocence in the world of human society when he meets Africa’s natives. He blends this innocence with the experience, eager to find out the essence of the creation. This radio drama is composed out of songs from REVELATION cycle, parts of the novel DAY SIXTH and PEOPLE SPEAK, of the travelogue AFRICA, and of the essay YOUTHS OF THE PEOPLE’S GENIUS. Parts of Otto Rank's study, BIRTH TRAUMA, were used also. ADVENTURER IN A CAGE is a title of his poem encapsulating his unconventional spirit and eagerness for freedom.

10. Slovakia/Radio and Television Slovakia (RTVS)
MARGITA AND BESNA

Original title: Margita a Besná

Authors: Ján Botto / radio adaptation by Zuza Ferenczová

Producer: Michaela Materáková

Director: Táňa Tadlánková

Sound Engineer: Stanislav Kaclík

Other key staff: Elena Podzámska; Helena Krajčiová; Juraj Predmerský; Ivo Gogál; Ladislav Konrád; Ľubica Očková; Miroslav Trnavský (actors)

Original language: Slovak

Length: 27’44’’

In her radio adaptation of the ballad "Margita and Besná" by Ján Botto, Zuza Ferenczová creates a kind of interconnection between the present and past. The play has a modern storyline, inspired by the original Botto´s narrative of raftsmen, rafting down the Váh river. By using this framework and transferring it to the present, the author gave origin to an up-to-date radio piece, based on an old text. Thanks to raftsmen, tourists and current visitors of the particular region get to know places where Botto reveals a tragical story of a widow who heartlessly got quit of her stepdaughter. However, they are more in role of glossators than narrators - they rather comment on the story, analyzing the site where the tragedy took place and contemplating about the difference between present and the past. The character of the jealous widow has her modern equivalent in a woman who, while sailing on the raft, tackles in her internal monologue the issue of ageing, betrayal and jealousy, affected by her own negative experience. Both characters - a lonely woman of our time and the widow from Botto´s ballad in the role of narrator of the story thus "communicate" together in a remarkable dialogue, offering a brand new perception of Botto´s approach to elaborating an old legend. The storyline of the play is supported by a suggestive sound design, with music by Slovak composer Rudolf Pepucha.

11. Slovnia/RTV Slovenia
MEDEA... WILL I BE

Original title: Medeja… bom postala

Title in English: Medea…Will I Be

Authors: Lucij Anej Seneka/Saška Rakef/Špela Kravogel

Producer: Radio Slovenija

Director: Špela Kravogel

Sound engineers: Sonja Strenar, Matjaž Miklič, Tristan Peloz

Other key staff: Nataša Barbara Gračner (Medea), Primož Pirnat (Jason), Radko Polič (Kreon), Boštjan Gombač - music

Original language: Slovene

Length: 37’45’’

"Medea ... Will I Be" is the story of a fugitive, a woman who becomes the victim of corrupt social conditions and intimate betrayals. The author of the adaptation Saška Rakef drew the basis for the story from a lesser-known text by the ancient Roman writer L. A. Seneca. In addition, quotations from the Bible and documentary material were incorporated into the story. Together with the author of the concept and director Špela Kravogel, the two explored the unconditional devotion of a woman to the man she loves and the fine line along which passionate love, incited by disappointment, turns into revenge, into a wildfire that can destroy the entire universe. They wondered what kind of life a woman has when she is abandoned, imprisoned, isolated among strangers and hated; when she is left by her man who gives in out of fear, becomes a puppet in the hands of the plebs; when no one offers her protection because they are only concerned with their own good and being liked by everyone (or at least the majority). And if Seneca as a Stoic philosopher sees Medea as irrational, the authors lead her through emotional storms, inner actions, destructive voices to a decision, to an entirely rational critique of society and an egotistical world.

12. Slovenia/RTV Slovenia – Radio Slovenia
THE BRATONCI PYLON

Original title: Bratonski pil

Author: Tamara Matevc

Producer: Radio Slovenija – Radio Drama Department

Director: Ana Krauthaker

Sound Engineer: Sonja Strenar, Matjaž Miklič

Other key staff: Vilma Štritof (dramaturge), Janez Dovč (composer), Darja Hlavka Godina(music designer), actors: Evgen Car, Vladimir Vlaškalić, Anita Gregorec, Blaž Šef, Jožef Ropoša, Ludvik Bagari

Original language: Slovenian

Length: 33’25’’

The tale of The Bratonci Pylon originates from 1724. Ivan Škafar, on whose account this play is based, heard it from Štefan Pivar (1861–1948), a local from Bratonci. Father and son from Bratonci put up a sign of gratitude with "The Croatian Jesus" by the road, believing that God and Our Lady from Turnišče had once saved them from a terrible death. Upon their return from Graz, Austria, an innkeeper in a tavern where they had stopped was planning to murder them, take their horses and cart, and the proceeds of the wheat they had sold. In this radio play, the son is replaced by the daughter Katica, who is just as clever, strong, skillful as the son in the folk tale. The ending is also thematically changed, by placing the universal meaning of the story into a contemporary social context. The tale is told in real Prekmurje dialect (similar to the Međimurje dialect in Croatia), giving it authenticity, while the simple language runs along a fluid narrative, so that the characters come to life in our minds. The author Tamara Matevc, a dramatist, prosaist and poet, first heard the story when it was told to her as a child by her grandmother from Bratonci, where she used to spend her holidays. “It was one of those stories that you want to hear again and again, full of suspense and horror, but with a happy ending.” It is a thrilling crime story, a matter of life and death, where the perpetrators are duly punished, as it should be in folk tales.

13. Switzerland/Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen and Bayerischer Rundfunk
ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN – A SITCOM FROM OLD VIENNA IN NINE ACTS

Original title: Roll over Beethoven - Eine Sitcom aus dem alten Wien in neun Aufzügen.

Authors: Johannes Mayr and Ulrich Bassenge

Producer: Anina Barandun

Directors: Johannes Mayr and Ulrich Bassenge

Sound Engineers: Basil Kneubühler (SRF) and Helge Schwarz (BR)

Other key staff: Wolfram Hoell (SRF) and Katja Huber (BR) (dramatic advisers)

Musical Supervision: Ulrich Bassenge

Pianist: Christian Ludwig Mayer

Translation: Christopher Findlay

Original language: German

Length: 56’35’’

Ludwig van Beethoven has moved from Bonn to Vienna. The democratically minded free spirit from the Rhineland promptly gets into conflict with the reality of the imperial and royal monarchy, as well as with his fellow human beings’ expectations.

As the first freelance artist in history, he struggles to deal with noble patrons, annoying social obligations, and the rush of mostly male groupies. A stubborn Swiss dilettante in search of a teacher in musical composition poses a recurring point of irritation.

Thus, the scrupulous composer is finding it very hard to put some decent notes on paper while being overrun with the hustle and bustle of the multinational imperial capital. And it could be so easy: all the poor man wants is some peace and quiet.

14. United Kingdom/Almost Tangible
ROBERT BURNS: A COLLECTION OF POEMS AND SONGS

Original title: Robert Burns: a collection of poems and songs

Author: Robert Burns

Producer: Charlotte Melén

Director: Carl Prekopp

Sound Engineer: Jon Nicholls

Other key staff: Alex Lynch (Production Manager); Full Company of Readers: Brigit Forsyth, Peter Gardiner, Sam Garioch, Eilidh Loan, Stephanie MacGaraidh, Joshua Manning, Sophia McLean, Lewis Rae, James Robinson, Ross Sutherland, Tom Vanson, Tracy Wiles

Original languages: English/Scots

Length: 57’40’’

Conceived and recorded remotely during lockdown and released on July 21st, 2020, to coincide with the anniversary of Robert Burns’ death, the Robert Burns collection is a stunning and evocative roller-coaster through the poems and songs of Scotland’s National Bard. From the soullessness of a call-centre to the simple joy of a baby’s nursery to the horror of the battlefields and all the way into space, each piece is set within vivid immersive soundscapes, and old texts are made new, given resonance in today’s world.

The realisation of the collection is a testament to the talent, generosity and dedication of the cast and creative team involved. Geographically disparate, locked in their homes with variable sound and technology setups, everyone rallied to overcome challenges - borrowing microphones from neighbours, building duvet forts across London, Manchester and Glasgow, and engaging with unfamiliar remote recording technology to connect with each other.

The raw recordings of the poems were woven into binaural, immersive soundscapes that spoke to the creative team and worked with the poems despite - and sometimes inspired by - sound quality issues, often fusing surprising sounds of the modern day with Burns’ 200 year old lyrics. The result is a magical ‘sound-journey’, a rich tapestry of seemingly disparate pieces stitched together by incredible sound design, united by the passion, love and talent of the team behind it.

15. Wales, UK/Audio drama, BBC Cymru Wales
MABINOGI: LOST LEGENDS AND DARK MAGIC – THE SEAL WOMAN

Original title: Mabinogi: Lost Legends and Dark Magic – The Seal Woman

Author: Dramatised by Lucy Catherine from the ancient Welsh texts

Producers: James Robinson and John Norton

Sound Engineer: Nigel Lewis

Other key staff: Eleri McAuliffe and Lindsay Rees

Original language: English

Length: 19’14’’

From the Red Book of Hergest, these are the tales of the Mabinogi. This is a returning fantasy adventure series, based on the iconic work of medieval Welsh mythology.

The tales of the Mabinogi form the earliest prose stories of Britain. Written around the 14th Century, the stories actually come from much earlier than that – they developed out of oral traditions, before being compiled in the 12th and 13th centuries. This was a time when the Welsh were struggling to keep their independence in the face of the Anglo-Norman conquest.

The stories tell of a mythical pre-Saxon era of Medieval Wales. This is a land of magic; of dragons, fairies and giants It's a land of romance and tragedy, adventure and fantasy. Award-winning writer Lucy Catherine gives these stories a modern flavour while remaining true to the vivid magic of Celtic mythology.

The series tells the story of Pryderi, a young prince of Dyfed, who has failed to prove himself in battle, and his adoptive sister, Brigid, who is a poet-in-training, and significantly more competent than Pryderi in pretty much everything.

In this episode, we hear the story of Brigid’s true parents. It’s a tale of love, betrayal and of how Brigid came to be abandoned.