Radio Drama/Screenplay ● The King’s Speech by David Seidler ● When I Lived in Peru by Andrew Viner 

https://quizlet.com/gb/471346584/a-level-english-anthology-61-the-kings-speech-flash-cards/

Audience, purpose and mode

Audience: the performers and technicians (including the director etc) of the original script; fans/followers of Andrew Viner, or those with an interest in Radio 4’s dramas

 Purpose: to entertain. 

Mode: a radio drama script intended for performance. 

Points for analysis and discussion 

Closely analyse, discuss and evaluate the text and consider the effects of literary or linguistic choices. 

Some points of interest might include:

 How the text is structured into short scenes that efficiently progress the action, and function as microcosms, of the world of the play. 

How Martin’s monologues serve to both introduce and sum up plot motifs and characterisation, eg ‘... highlighted by our respective attitudes to our careers’. 

How the stage directions frame each scene and support generic conventions of scene setting, influence performance and language use, and add to the audience’s understanding of plot, character and theme, eg ‘F/X: DOOR KNOCK’, ‘(OLDER, AVUNCULAR)’, ‘F/X CHAMPAGNE CORK POP’. 

The following techniques are evident in this text: 

Phatic/conventional language frameworks to establish roles and setting, eg ‘You wanted to see me ...? ... Ah yes, come in ... have a seat ... if it’s about those bugs ... Congratulations!’ 

Use of rhetorical questions, eg ‘Redundant? ... You’ve been here for ten years now, right?’ A lexis drawn from the world of work and business/subject-specific semantic fields, eg ‘IT OFFICE’, ‘OFFICE NOISE’, ‘downturn ... cut costs ... outsourcing ... appraisal ... career’. 

This text gives opportunities for students to reflect on a variety of terms and concepts. Some examples might include: Use of humour, eg ‘that’s what I loved ... my career down the toilet ... But what about the stubble and drool ...’ 

Dramatic tension/irony, eg ‘... promotion while they reorganise after the redundancies ... Anyway what was your work news?’ Spoken language features and minor sentences, eg ‘Oh. I’m kind of settled here ...’, ‘I’ll get a raise ...’, ‘Since I graduated’, ‘But I love my job’. 

When discussing the effects of literary or linguistic choices, students might be asked to consider questions such as: 

• How is the overall tone of the piece achieved? 

• What are the features which characterise this text as a radio drama? 

• What are the features which characterise this text as a play script? 

• What is the intention of the text? How do you know? How successful is it in achieving this? 

• To what extent does the writer create a sense of personality in the text? How is this achieved? 

• How has the text been crafted to meet the expectations of the audiences?

Make connections across texts, drawing comparisons with and contrasts to other texts: 

How this text compares and contrasts with the Seidler piece in construction, purpose and genre.

How this text compares with the Seidler piece in intention, setting, context and/or power relationships. 

How the realism of the language (or lack of it) compares with that of The King’s Speech. 

Numerous external references or sources could be used to compare, contrast and give insight into the text, and could therefore be drawn from a very wide range of BBC Radio 4 dramas or indeed from those of other networks. Some useful examples can be readily found online (eg www.genericradio.com/library.php and www.simplyscripts.com/radio_all.html) with which to discuss radio drama as a genre in its own right. 

Both modern and less-modern examples could provide students with an understanding of how the genre continues to develop, and therefore extracts could be taken from the ‘golden age’ of radio to provide background on the form. Radio plays of famous works that have been (re)interpreted for radio could serve to stimulate knowledge and appreciation of the genre and to inform and provide insight into language features, choices and performance. Examples could be drawn from Shakespeare’s plays performed for radio or broadcast as podcasts (by the BBC and many others) to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds or Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. S

Extension activities: 

• Produce and perform the extract. They should record both the result of their work and their approaches to the task as a piece of reportage, either for printed form or as a blog. 

• Write reviews of the text as it appears in the anthology, and/or of their production. 

• Tansform the text into a letter from Martin to Claire, perhaps using reported speech techniques to incorporate elements of the dialogue. 

For any of the above activities, students write a commentary, explaining what linguistic and/or literary devices were used to transform the original format, and how effective these are against the intended purpose and/or audience.