Audio theatre

Audio Theatre is a generic term for a modern art form which is disseminated in various media. It had its greatest flowering on radio, before television was introduced, during the period known as the Golden Age of Radio, and as a result has often been called Radio Theatre although as a form, it is independent of its media.

Characteristics

Some points to remember are:

1. Audio theatre is the best name for a distinct art form, as valid as novels, paintings, or movies.
2. Audio theatre is an entire entertainment industry, like magazines or television.
3. Audio theatre is older than radio, but is just being discovered by many people.
4. Audio theatre is one of the most exciting opportunities available today for creators, producers, performers, publishers, broadcasters, retailers, and especially, for listeners.
5. Audio theatre is the most cost-effective performance art in the world, in terms of the resources needed to create a world-class production and reach a mass audience.

Audio theatre is a linear form, spinning a yarn of time for the listener from four elements:

1. Speech – which gives information, and presents human characterizations
2. Music – which has a direct impact on the emotions, and is often knowingly so used. Music can also function as “stage curtains,” signalling beginnings, endings, and transitions in time, space, or mood..
3. Sound Effects – which help the imagination to paint pictures in one’s head. These include “spot” effects like telephones ringing or guns firing; “background” or “ambiance” effects such as a city street or a forest full of birds; or acoustic cues involving the apparent size of a space, or apparent distance and (in stereo) position from the listener’s point of view.
4. Silence – in the sense of timing.

Audio theatre is not audiobooks, or “talking books.” because those are not theatrical presentations. Merely reading a story aloud does not make it a piece of theatre; it still remains a piece which was created for the printed page.

History

Audio theatre has deep roots, building on very old traditions of storytelling and stage presentation. In the 1880s, theatre performances were heard over the telephone. By the 1890s, sales of phonograph recordings were booming. For hot products, recording companies turned to well-known performers from Variety, Vaudeville, Chatauqua, Minstrel Shows, etc. Musical acts were obvious first choices, but the non-musical “sketch” acts weren’t far behind. Words were added to describe scenes, and set up sight-, now sound-gags. Sound effects and music were adapted from stage technique, and audio theatre was born – years before sound was first broadcast over the radio! Called (and thought of) as “Radio Theatre,” it became the hottest mass-entertainment art form of the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, now called the Golden Age of Radio.

In 1962, live American network radio theatre ended, but today this Old-Time Radio (OTR) is popular again on recordings. In other countries, radio networks such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation continue to commission and broadcast radio plays.

New technical developments in audio, including “hi-fi” and stereo, have opened huge new possibilities. Creators like Stan Freberg, and especially The Fireside Theatre, made two major contributions to the development of the form:

1. They began to use the newly available tools of multitrack recording, overdubbing, and mixdown for convenience, efficiency, and precision control far beyond what is possible “live.”
2. They accepted from the outset that this new material was intended to be heard primarily from recordings. Therefore, the listener had the opportunity to listen to part or all of the piece more than once. Significantly, the producer need not take pains to make certain the listener has followed every aspect and nuance before moving on: it’s OK if the listener has something new to discover in repeated listenings.

The Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop, now the National Audio Theatre Festival has trained and inspired hundreds of new young talents since 1980. By 2001, sales of audiobooks, OTR programs, and the popularity of talk radio made it clear that there is a very large audience for spoken-word entertainment.

Audio Theatre Today

As the 21st Century begins, audio theatre is growing, and being re-invented, as it takes its rightful place in the spectrum of entertainment. There are more creators and producers of audio theatre today than there have been for decades. New styles and new techniques are developing. Major stars from movies and TV are creating and performing audio theatre; but beyond that, new talents from coast to coast are showing their abilities – because the nature of audio theatre makes it possible to produce world-class work without huge resources.

Production

Three basic production methods are in use, singly or in combination, today:

Live Performance: where actors, sound effects performers, engineers and musicians gather and perform the script in real time, either in a sound studio or in a theatre with an audience.

Multitrack Studio: where voices are recorded separately, edited, and assembled in a multitrack environment in a sound studio. Music and other sounds are added on separate tracks, and all these elements are mixed and edited together to achieve the final result.

Location Production: where a single microphone is used as a movie camera, and the actors perform many of their own sound effects (footsteps, doors, telephones, etc.) as they read the lines. Scenes are “shot” in various locations outside the studio, capturing the characteristic acoustic responses and background ambience of different places.

Distribution

Mostly, these days, the works are distributed as recordings, which allow the production to be enjoyed at a time and place of the listener’s choosing. The Internet is creating new channels of distribution, and there is also a resurgence of broadcast audio theatre.

Starting on the telephone and the wax cylinder, but achieving its biggest audience over radio broadcast, Audio Theatre returns to popularity on its original media: recordings, and telephone wires. Having come full circle, Audio Theatre is here to stay.