RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

А mere fleeting glance at the historical development of radio drama gives evident proof that, apart from film, radio drama is the most autochthonous artistic genre which has been born in our century, a genre made possible only in our time since (like fllm) it cannot exist without the basic technical conditions, in this case without electro-acoustic (popularly - radio) waves, which transmit a message of one kind or another to the potential recipient, the listener, Only by taking into account all characteristics of a new artistic genre can we arrive at its definition; the term radio drama (the approximateness and inadequacy of this term should be dealt with on some other occasion) today signifies an artistic creation intended only to be listened to, realized only through listening, which can reach an unlimited number of listeners through modulated radio waves over an агеа covered by the rauio station broadcasting the radio drama - taking into account its programme conception, and regional, national and social function. Radio drama consists of the following elements: the word interpreted or registered in direct reality, music and proper sound - either taken from reality ог an artificially created effect - in other words, all that is made up of sound, all that can realize in auditory form i its basic conceptual and existential essence. The basic purpose of this type of artistic creation is representation, presentation; this classifies radio drama as representative art, art which reincarnates real or imagined reality, the actual world or a fantastic creation, in order to transmit them to the recipient through presentation. As ап artistic genre, radio drama essentially brings together certain endeavours to synthesize individual artistic expressions from the past (the most drastic here is certainly Wagner’s attempt to create Gesamtkunstwerk as a synthesis of words, music and theatricality) although at the same time radio drama must also take саге of the exact orientation of our century and include in its synthesis all that can be realized through radio as a medium, within the technical conditions which make radio drama possible as a genre. I аш sure that these facts have long been known to everyone who in °ne way or another, theoretically or practically, deals with radio drama, so I would like to stress that this repetition has not been made with апу unnecessary ог out of place didactic desire. But nevertheless nothing else is left to us but to enumerate these tacts and realizations once more, in order to now uncover the other »several« dimensions of radio drama as a genre, that is, its artistic and aesthetic significence which we are most concerned with. The very moment when all the elements mentioned can be synthesized into a whole and when they begin to live within it, as parts of a whole, all these elements undergo an essential transformation, revision, of their function and meaning. They are still what they are in themselves, but at the same time they become something else as

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