Radio

I love radio. It’s where I started playwriting and I have it to thank for getting me into the world of drama. Although I hate the sound of my own voice, I also enjoy broadcasting on radio and have recently started to get into drama-documentary, both as a listener and a writer.

Radio dramas to date:

Kukutis in the Dark, 2022-23
Audio dramatisation of poem cycle by Marcelijus Martinaitis for ARC publications and Lithuanian Embassy.

Notes on Water, 2022
BBC Radio 3 “Between The Ears” audio adaptation of 2 long poems reimagined for two voices and a soundscape.
Click here to listen on SoundCloud.

Middlemarch Monologues, 2022
Collaborative, contemporary re-imagining of George Eliot’s classic novel. Lead writer. BBC Radio 3.

The Ventriloquist’s Dummy, 2021
BBC Radio 4 Drama Documentary.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, 2020
BBC Radio 4 Classic Serial dramatization of Carson MCullers novel.

Orlando, 2019
Collaborative poetic and dramatic response to/version of Virginia Woolf’s novel. BBC Radio 3.
Finalist BBC Audio Drama Award Best Adaptation 2020.

The Summer Book, 2018
Dramatization of Tove Jansson novel, BBC Radio 4.

What Maisie Knew, The Aspern Papers, Daisy Miller, 2018
Three Henry James dramatizations for series Love Henry James.
BBC Radio 4.

Three Soldiers, 2015
BBC Radio 4. Original Drama.

Midnight Cry Of The Deathbird: a re-imagining of Nosferatu, 2012
BBC Radio 3. Radical version of the 1922 silent film.

2000-10

Howards End
Adaptation. BBC Radio 4.

Caligari
BBC Radio 3. Inspired by The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, dir. Wiene 1919.

Spellbound
BBC Radio 4. Adapted from The House of Dr Edwardes by Francis Beeding and Spellbound, the film dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

I Ran For Miles
BBC Radio 4 original drama.

Strike
BBC Radio 4. Original drama. Shortlisted for BAFTA Mental Health Award.

No Harm
BBC Radio 4.

Lost In Space
BBC Radio 4. Shortlisted for BAFTA Mental Health Award.

I Think I Could Turn and Live With Animals
BBC Radio 4.

Medea: Mapping The Edge
BBC Radio 3, 80 minute version of theatre drama. Mapping The Edge.

Desire Lines
BBC Radio 4

Room Of Leaves
BBC Radio 4, 45 minutes original drama. BBC Prix Italia entry.
Shortlisted for BAFTA Mental Health Award

Other radio writing and broadcasts:

2017-current

The Essay: ‘Vaughan Williams: Belonging’
BBC Radio 3 - 14th October 2022

Notes on Water - BBC Radio 3 “Between The Ears” audio adaptation of 2 long poems reimagined for two voices and a soundscape, April 2022

Northern Drift - recorded live at Hebden Bridge Trades Club for BBC Radio 3, March 2022

Between The Ears - audio version of ’Notes on Water’ BBC Radio 3, April 2022

Introduction to dramatization of Orlando
BBC Radio 3

11 RLF podcast essays

The Essay: ‘Forgetting’
BBC Radio 3.

2004-17

BBC Radio 4 broadcast short stories
Her Things for MLF
The Pennine Way. Short story pub. Comma Press
Drift poetry/spoken word for Slovak Radio/BBC.

Broadcasts inc The Verb BBC Radio 3 (x 2), Word On The Street, Fine Lines, The Message, Woman’s Hour, all BBC Radio 4.

Here’s a poem/lyric from Caligari, my radio adaptation of the silent film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
In the play this text was sung by the character of Cesare, the Somnambulist, whose role was played, entirely in song, by counter-tenor Robin Blaze.
Music by Olly Fox

Cesare Sings*

1
What stares is not I,
is mirrors in a plundered house.
Behind, attic-black, peeled walls,
carcass on a bare floor. Raven
or jackdaw?

What sleeps is not I.
Was taken from my quiet place,
locked in a room of coats,
too heavy to run, slack jaw,
thick tongue.

I was stolen from myself,
was sweated from my skin, poor thing.
Someone made a different dream of me,
this effigy, impossibly thin,
sewn in.

What stares is not I,
is mirrors in an empty house.
Broken bird on a bare floor.
Cracked wall, stares black.
Raven. Jackdaw.

2
In no man’s land
I cannot breathe,
cannot die.
My thick tongue
traces ruins,
burnt out, dry,
I am occupied.
Mud in the mouth,
mud in the eyes.

3
I am the blind who leads the blind.
A broken bird,
one wing held high along the wall,
a hide-behind,
one hand a sail to steer my graceful course,
the other by my side, behind my back,
it holds a blade.

4
Am I I? Am I I? Am I
stuttering?
Am I threaded to you,
or is my arm unstitching?
Are you tugging me into myself
or is this unravelling,
jackdaw, liebling?

5
Beneath the white of the track,
and the black of the paper rock,
I have fallen into something green:
bracken, vetch, the morning dew.
I die, wider awake than I have ever been.

*Cesare is the name of the somnambulist in the 1919 silent film, THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI.