Output details

Radio Play: '15 Ways to Leave Your Lover'

This play forms part of the creative strand that comes out of a larger research project containing two types of output: creative and critical. This research project will also result in monograph that examines the practice of writing radio drama for the BBC in the light of my findings on two key figures in early BBC history: Hilda Matheson and Mabel Constanduros. I am rediscovering theories and practices from the past because so many common radio techniques have become thought of as received wisdom. I am establishing what is still useful today by considering these techniques in the light of contemporary radio criticism and playwriting theory. 15 Ways to Leave Your Lover examines Matheson’s theory of argument plays, which she outlines in her book Broadcasting (1933). I set out to rediscover what she meant by ‘plays of discussion’ and used this apparently light-hearted play as a vehicle for a narrative based on the fight for power that exists between men and women in order to stimulate a debate on the subject in the mind of the listener. Matheson’s concerns were also those of Brecht, and these are the basis of his Verfremdungseffekt; the play is consciously Brechtian, with its deliberately misleading title (Sam and Rob never really leave each other until the end; their problem is that they cannot leave each other) and the announced titles of each scene, which are based on ways of getting out in cricket. I have attempted to make the world strange so that the listener is prodded into asking questions and re-examining the status quo.

Further information on this research can be found at:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/english-drama/staff/ms-carolyn-scott-jeffs.html