RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Manv of these documentarv radio dramas have met with e\ceptional acclaim and tribute in the broadest ranks of radio listeners of all ages This is not surprising, particularlv when we know how much, for e\ample, serialized stories, memoirs, and the numerous, multilavered dramatizations of those pivotal moments in the life or death of some historical figure, the decisive flashes of creative inspiration in the work of a painter, composer or writer, or in the maelstrom of events that rock the world - how much all of this is at the centrepoint of the most rivetted attention of the times and the world we live in. In the desire to bring bvgone realitv, or a realitv that sti.ll persists, back to life in its wav, which is to sav using its particular means of expression, bv multiple creative acts the documentarv radio drama leaves behing something that is most closelv, raost intimatelv related to art, unlike manv other, and not onlv radio drama, forms which as artistic disciplines interpret and depict '• corresponding aspects of realitv as far as thev can and are able The documentarv radio drama, then, with its manifold expressive radiophonic tools, deals with life, takes segments or whole life entities and adapts them with compounds of speech, music, noises and other sound effects from real life. S ometimes these compounds are onlv an authenic recording of something that reallv took place at the given time and place - a routine part of radio reporting too - but most often thev аге edited reconstructions, made in the studio or laboratorv, with the inevitable assistance of one of more technicallv sophisticated tape-recorders Covering broad range from productions resembling a striking radio report and right up to amazing radiophonic achievements in which some alreadv bvgone realitv is brought back to life and transposed faithfullv imprinted with the traces that remained behind it, documentarv dramas and the so-called documentarv programmes in general аге becoming more and more attractive in the other mass media as well, especiallv television, causing the same curiosib' and surprises akin to the wav that science fiction is inciting contemporaries to