Sight Unseen

In Sight Unseen radio drama, a genre traditionally dismissed as popular culture, is celebrated as high art. The radio plays discussed here range from the conventional (John Ardens Pearl) to the docudramatic (David Rudkins Cries from Casement), from the curtly conversational (Harold Pinters A Slight Ache) to the virtually operatic (Robert Fergusons Transfigured Night), testifying to radio dramas variety and literary stature. Two of the plays included in this study pose aesthetic questionsthe role of art in politics (Howard Barkers Scenes from an Execution), and the nature of artistic excellence (Tom Stoppards Artist Descending a Staircase). Guralnick contends that well-crafted radio plays tend to meld to their medium so naturally that they cannot be transferred to the theater or to film without being diminished. Each play is thus shown to exploit, to special effect, one of radios fundamental features: its invisible stage (Barker and Stoppard), its affinity to music (Ferguson and Beckett), its ability to imitate the minds subjectivity (Kopit and Pinter), its association with world events through features and the news (Rudkin). As for the question of radios relation to the theater, the issue is engaged in the work of John Arden, who dares to portray a theatrical stage on the airwaves, while intimating that the radio offers contemporary playwrights an incomparable boon: creative conditions roughly equivalent to those enjoyed by Shakespeare.