RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Đorđe Đurđević

THE DRAMATICS OF HISTORV

The documentarv radio drama, as in the case of ’Forty-eighth (Četrdeset i osma) by Krsto Škanata, is in fact the formula of a new radiophonic development It powerfullv intenveaves and combines authentic testimonv about times and people, and is permeated bv a peculiar drama that subsenuentlv springs and gushes from all that has been preserved for posteritv, in the form of a written newspaper notice or report, the stenogram of a court trial, a tape ог film recording not in the imaginarv museums of memorv, but in the museums of conscience and reason. These museums issue a warning at the same time, inasmuch as they confirm the old truth about historv as a stage on which humanitv and inhumanitv appear in succession in the roles of people and brutes. Since the recent abrupt burgeoning of the documentarv radio drama is an irrefutable fact, we must ask, in the first place: what is it? what is its function? how is it most fullv presented? Drawing on the experience gained in the mostvaried kinds of dramatization and adaptation of prose and dramatic writings, and especiallv what has been achieved in producing original radio dramas, certain authors and directors have fashioned authentic testimonv in the documentarv fields into radio dramas in their more and more frepuent radiophonic e.\periments. Different undertakings have been tried in this regard - from the studious utilization of historical documents, interviews with individual people, radio dramas bringing to life various archive materials and confidential documents, up to davs-long recordings in the open, in mines, factories, at river-sides, fairs, on the top and the bottom of the sea, in upland hamlets and in townships that stand at the end of the onlv rail track.

58