For the past term, the wonderful Eve Dalton, technician at Soho Theatre and member of ‘The Invisible Theatre Company’ has been workshopping with the first years, including myself, in the art of creating radio plays. Our aim in the end is to create a live radio performance of George Orwell’s ‘War of the Worlds’, creating the sound effects and voices ourselves in front of a live audience.
Our first week was an introduction to what radio plays are all about. We learnt how to get into radio play and voice over work and the fun you can get up to being a foley artist. We also listened to samples of ‘The Invisible Theatre Company’s work, which was fantastic. Everyone was kept guessing on how all the sound effects were made; you’d be surprised how much a sack of potatoes dropped from a height, sounds like the result of a non-functioning parachute!
In the next session we had great fun being foley artists, creating sounds for a short radio play; this involved scattering granola on wood for the sound of soil on a coffin, opening lunch boxes for the sound of opening clasps and general (maybe not so realistic) impressions of bees!
In our third week we got onto voice acting, which everybody loved! Here, Eve was joined by her colleagues and friends Beth Eyre, Sean Bye and Richard Welbirg. We were coached on how to perfect our RP, American and Russian accents, putting them into practise with genuine radio adverts.
Finally, we got onto the nitty gritty stuff: auditions for ‘War of the Worlds’, with some very amusing accents and casting was confirmed. Then came the first read through, here lines were cut and chopped to perfect the script and the decisions on how to create the sound effects were confirmed. We are now preparing ourselves for the live show but we’ve had so much fun in the process that the end result will be the icing on the cake!
Written by Illy Bell
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