The Stage

Dramatic air - How To Get Work In Radio Drama

Published Friday 26 August 2005 at 11:05 by Marina Caldarone

In the first of a two-part examination on radio, Marina Caldarone dispels the myth that the area is a closed shop and explains the ways in which performers can get a foot in the door

There is a commonly held belief among actors that radio drama is a closed shop - that it is difficult to break into and that the same actors work all the time in this medium. This is far from the case and the BBC has actively implemented procedures to ensure there is an equal opportunity for working in this medium.

You may have heard of the Radio Rep - now called the Radio Drama Company. There are usually about ten actors in the company. Their ranks are boosted by the four young Carleton Hobbs award winners. Final-year accredited drama school students are picked for teams of four to represent their respective institutes in this competition - now in its 52nd year - named after radio actor Carleton Hobbs. The winning team members are each offered six-month contracts.

The company works in much the same way as the theatre rep system does, actors are available and ‘on call’ to work on any number of plays/readings within the hours of a working week. Contracts are for three or six months and the work is fantastically diverse, challenging and in the truest spirit of the ensemble. Many actors who have worked in the rep return time and again to the department.

Mention must be made of another initiative that does more than anything else to encourage and support actors new to this medium, the Norman Beaton Fellowship.

This is run by Radio Drama as a key part of the department’s (((soundstart))) talent events. Its aim is to broaden the range of actors available to producers across the UK by encouraging applicants from non-traditional training backgrounds. To that end, it complements the Carleton Hobbs Bursary Award. Two NBF winners each receive fixed-term bursary contracts with the Radio Drama Company and four runners-up receive single freelance engagements in radio drama productions. More info on this initiative on www.bbc.co.uk/soundstart.

So how else does your work become known to the BBC? An actor will either be seen in TV or theatre. They might then be invited for a workshop, or offered a freelance engagement on the basis of what the producer has seen - they may even be asked in for an informal audition if the part is substantial and their radio track record not substantive.

You are not necessarily precluded from working if you are new to the medium. Or you can send in an unsolicited CD. When it arrives at Radio Drama - to be addressed to Soundstart Office, BBC Radio Drama, East Wing, Bush House, The Strand, London WC2B 4PH - experienced Radio Drama staff will listen to it. If it is felt that your voice could be useful when casting, the CD will be heard in a group meeting of producers.

These meetings happen approximately once a month. The department may retain your tape for future reference. Ideally you wouldn’t want it to be returned to you. If the CD is well received at that meeting of producers, you could be invited to an actor’s workshop - more on this later - or invited to meet a producer, who is casting in your voice range. Alternatively, you could be asked to go in to audition for a role in production.

Actors’ workshops are held as required through the year and the sessions recorded for private audition. These recordings may then be circulated to other drama producers. The workshops normally run for a four-hour session, for about eight actors at a time, and usually focus on a specific voice range - for example, older female voices or young/teenage male voices. Attendance is by invitation only, one cannot apply to be considered.

After the workshop you might be offered a contract with the radio drama company, or a freelance engagement in a radio play and your workshop CD will be circulated to other drama directors in the department, so there may always be the possibility of some future employment. That said, there is no guarantee of employment after a workshop. Also, there is a lot of informal discussion about actors between producers, who build up a reference point through listening to one another’s productions, and formal discussion, too, during the listening review meeting within the department every Monday. This is where staff gather to discuss content, style, casting etc of a number of nominated productions close to broadcast.

And of course BBC Radio Drama isn’t just made in London, though this is by far the largest department. There are also BBC studios in Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. Research your local studio via BBC websites. It may be better for you to target them rather than the London centre.

You can do an awful lot of ‘professional listening’, too. There is so much available. If you study the Radio Times for a standard week, the pattern of dramatic and reading output remains roughly the same through the year on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4, not forgetting BBC Radio 7. This is one of the BBC’s new digital networks, broadcasting from 7am to 3.30am except for Saturday, when it ends at 3am.

See www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listings/ for the schedule, which is stripped across the week with regular programme zones at the same time every day. It’s a mix of the best of BBC comedy, drama and books, as well as a brand new daily live kids’ show, the Big Toe Radio Show.

You can access BBC Radio 7 as well as Radio 3 and 4, on digital radio sets, the internet and digital television. The more familiar you are with the medium, it stands to reason the more likely you are to appreciate the repercussions of what you do as an actor on the microphone. It is another form of professional literacy for the actor, available around the clock and free. These are exciting times for radio drama.

• Marina Caldarone is a freelance radio drama and theatre director, and co-author with Marilyn Le Conte of the forthcoming Methuen publications, Radioactive, which are monologues and duologues specifically for the recorded media. She is drama director of Crying Out Loud, making demo CDs for actors