RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

В oško Т omašević, М А

ON ТНЕ ESSENCE AND STRUCTURE OF RADIO DRAMA

T owards an ontological and phenomenological definition of radio drama as an artistic form.

It is possible that a man who has only once in his Ufe Ustened to a radio drama and one who has already Ustened to several hundred have at least on one occasion asked themselves the question we now ask; what is the essence of radio drama? We may put this question in another, more philosophical way: in what way does radio drama exist? Naturally, in doing this, we imagine both men to be prone to speculation, to theoretical, philosphical reflection on the subject in hand. It is clear at the very outset that an answer to this question should be sought in the ontologv of arts, in the structural analysis of art and in the phenomenoiogy of artistic forms. During the reflections which follow we shall, of course, bear in mind that at its moment of concretisation (performance) a radio drama is a work of art ог, as S erge D übrovsky has put it, ”a form of the appearance of the Other”. Before proceeding to an analysis of these problems we wish, here and now, to remove апу possible terminological misconceptions regarding the term ”radio drama”. F ог it would be an ontological fallacy to understand the whole syntagm ”radio drama” which is used to denote one genre among all forms of dramatic literature purely as a text whose content is revealed by actors (performers) and which is transmitted through a a medium, 1 e. radio. The term ”radio drama” is an entity in itself where the first part of the term, ”radio” conotes neither more nor iess than the second part, "drama”.

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