It’s still possible to hear the dramas of Chekhov, O. Henry and Tarkington on air.
By: Susan Van Dongen
Remember the crackle of static as you carefully turned the dial of the radio, trying to find your favorite show? The back of the machine was always warm, glowing from the tubes inside. Then there were the magical voices and sounds coming from the box the comedy of Jack Benny, the absurdity of Bob and Ray, the suspense of The Shadow and stylistic dramas like Dragnet.
Writer and radio performer William Spear says it’s wonderful to hold onto those memories, but also suggests radio lovers tune into great stuff that is happening today on the air.
"Radio drama in the United States is not dead," he writes in the introduction to his new book, Lit Between the Ears, Volume One: Chekhov, O. Henry, Spear and Tarkington on the Air (Wolfmont Publishing, $14.95).
"Radio still occupies niches over the air and across the Internet," he writes. "America’s first great mass entertainment medium retains its capacity to develop characters and advance plot lines in a singular manner. ‘Lit Between the Ears’ offers plays for this power."
The book, Mr. Spear’s first, features classic literature re-interpreted and transformed for radio theater, celebrating the medium’s unusual and powerful capacity to entertain.
The plays range from a self-imposed 15-year prison sentence in The Wager (based on "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov), a countdown to death in When the Last Leaf Falls (from O. Henry’s "The Last Leaf"), a singing debut and attempted murder in Mr. Spear’s original work, You Didn’t Have To Go, and three families’ diverging fortunes in The Splendor in Midland, the author’s treatment of Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons.
"People say ‘In an era of MTV, video-on-demand and 24-hour-a-day television, how could I possibly connect with radio drama?’" Mr. Spear says. "What I tried to do to overcome this, was to take classic literary figures and adapt their works. So even if someone might be uncomfortable with radio drama, they know these names, they knew their style of writing. So they might venture in on the premise that these authors would deliver a satisfactory experience."
Employed by the Office of International Trade and Protocol within the state’s Commerce, Economic Growth and Tourism Commission, Mr. Spear, with his dulcet, distinctive voice, has also worked here and there as a radio announcer.
"I’ve always been a fan of radio and have had a couple of different jobs here and there," Mr. Spear says. "I did radio in college, I did mornings at WDVR, I worked for NJN for more than two years, a part-time air position. It’s the kind of thing that gets inside your blood and you find ways to stay involved."
Although performers of radio drama might find it difficult to make a living in the United States, a number of countries have thriving industries. Britain, Canada, Australia, Italy, Switzerland and Germany are just a few of the nations where the medium is alive and well.
"There’s a lot of theater that gets aired over the radio in these countries," Mr. Spear says. "In Canada, it’s a natural because it’s such a large country. You can take a radio signal and transmit it a much longer distance that you could with a television signal."
Mr. Spear started writing for the medium in 1994 and founded Hunterdon Radio Theatre in 1999, writing more than 15 plays since.
With the nonprofit HRT, the Clinton resident has witnessed the excitement and challenge of writing for and performing radio drama. Members and participants are involved in all aspects of the productions including writing scripts, directing, producing, acting, providing music, and engineering. To achieve the skills necessary for radio theatre, educational workshops are offered in script writing, acting, directing and recording engineering. The group’s works have been aired on a handful of stations in New Jersey and New York.
HRT boasts about 125 ongoing, regularly performing people of all ages.
"That’s one of the beautiful things about radio," Mr. Spear says. "The voice quality lasts a much longer time than any physical appearance. In fact, you can throw physical appearances out the window. In one of our workshops, we had someone performing who was constrained to a wheelchair, someone who probably could not have performed on the stage unless it was for a wheelchair-written role. But she had the voice, she had the script and she was stunning. That’s the magic of radio drama."
Interestingly, stage and film performers don’t always feel comfortable with radio drama. For one thing, they have to learn that it’s really a director’s medium.
"In radio, the director is like an orchestra leader in that you have a ton of voices, you have musicians and sound effects artists the director leads the show," Mr. Spear says. "Stage folks want to really dominate their performances. In radio this is not the case. It’s a director’s medium.
"You are at his beck and call, and if the director does not cue you, you’d better not say your line, no matter what your tendency is," he continues. "It takes a while for people to get used to this. You have to throw out all the constraints and techniques you’ve learned from the stage and trust the director, or you have to walk away."
Mr. Spear says radio drama survives on compact discs, podcasts and Internet broadcasts and he believes the medium’s flexibility and adaptability to various genres are true strengths. He sees radio theater riding a new wave of technology, perhaps growing to its former glory.
"The future of computing lies in hand-held devices like PDA’s and cell phones computing is moving away from the desktop and even the laptop to mobile devices," Mr. Spear says. "I thought, this is perfect for a hand-held radio drama network, mobile mysteries or something like that.
"Part of the challenge is to get a visually oriented society to allow themselves to let go of what they see and just listen, to experience what can come into their ears and move them."
Lit Between the Ears, Volume One: Chekhov, O. Henry, Spear and Tarkington on the
Air by William Spear is available through Wolfmont Publishing. On the Web:
www.wolfmont.com.
Hunterdon Radio Theatre on the Web: www.hrtonline.org