The Audio Dramatist’s Critical Vocabulary in Great Britain

This chapter investigates how British audio dramatists and producers developed the notion and theory of practical sonic production narratology. They relied on and interrogated the traditions of theatrical and novelistic storytelling. Authors and auteurs such as Gordon Lea, Lance Sieveking, Tyrone Guthrie, Val Gielgud, Felix Felton, Donald McWhinnie, and William Ash offered little evidence that they fully engaged the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Vladimir Propp, Gérard Genette, Tzvetan Todorov, Mieke Bal, Claude Bremond, and Franz Karl Stanzel. These auteurs had confident ideas of what would constitute variously described successful sound, microphone, and broadcast and audio plays and dramas. The analysis explores how these authors developed their opinions on techniques and concepts that have given sound drama its unique literary as well as dramatic identity.