Audio Drama Modernism: The Missing Link between Descriptive Phonograph Sketches and Microphone Plays on the Radio (Palgrave Studies in Sound)

__Audio Drama and Modernism__ traces the development of political and modernist sound drama during the first 40 years of the 20th Century. It demonstrates how pioneers in the phonograph age made significant, innovative contributions to sound fiction before, during, and after the Great War. In stunning detail, Tim Crook examines prominent British modernist radio writers and auteurs, revealing how they negotiated their agitational contemporaneity against the forces of Institutional containment and dramatic censorship. The book tells the story of key figures such as Russell Hunting, who after being jailed for making ‘sound pornography’ in the USA, travelled to Britain to pioneer sound comedy and montage in the pre-Radio age; Reginald Berkeley who wrote the first full-length anti-war play for the BBC in 1925; and D.G. Bridson, Olive Shapley and Joan Littlewood who all struggled to give a Marxist voice to the working classes on British radio. Front Matter ....Pages i-viii Introduction (Tim Crook)....Pages 1-9 Audio Drama and Modernism: Gordon Lea 1926, the First Manifesto (Tim Crook)....Pages 11-26 Radio Drama and the Avant-Garde: Lance Sieveking 1934, the Second Manifesto (Tim Crook)....Pages 27-39 The Modernist Turn in Literature and Radio Studies: How It Changes Understanding of the History of Sound Drama (Tim Crook)....Pages 41-54 Bridging Political Modernism Between Descriptive Phonographs, 1920s Political BBC Radio Drama and the 1930s Agitational Radio Features (Tim Crook)....Pages 55-78 Modernist Phonograph Drama in a Belfast Street and a Montage on War: The Sonic Genius of Russell Hunting (Tim Crook)....Pages 79-86 Great War Descriptive Sketches (Tim Crook)....Pages 87-131 Angels of Mons and the Divine Service for King and Country (Tim Crook)....Pages 133-165 Are the Sound Drama Phonographs Examples of ‘Modernist’ Propaganda? (Tim Crook)....Pages 167-194 Reginald Berkeley: Pioneering Modernist Playwright and Political Radio Drama as Agitational Contemporaneity (Tim Crook)....Pages 195-246 Direct BBC Censorship of Modernist Texts by D.G. Bridson and His Negotiation with Joan Littlewood and Olive Shapley of ‘Institutional Containment’ (Tim Crook)....Pages 247-276 Sound Drama as Political and Agitational Contemporaneity and Modernist Expression (Tim Crook)....Pages 277-289 Back Matter ....Pages 291-339