Radio Drama Research Articles

Trips of Death and Alienation in Beckett's All That Fall

Samuel Beckett, besides writing for the stage, has during his long career written for both radio and TV. He has also written one script entitled Film which was filmed for the New York Film Festival in 1956. All That Fall was written in 1956 and it is the longest Radio play of Beckett. Suffering, a fundamental attribute of existence, constitutes the centre of Beckett's plays and the plays demonstrate, in turn, different kind or human responses to suffering. Maddy's deep sorrow and anguish at the loss of her daughter Minnie arouses her desire for an end, what she calls to be" in atoms''. Dan, Like Hamm, overcomes the Absurd by exiling himself to suffering and refusing to be intimidated or beguiled. Unlike Hamm's insistent attempts to exterminate all life, Dan understands the futility of such effort and restrains himself from giving in to that kind of impulse. But the irony is that death is all around him underscoring the fact that death and alienation are no solution to the problems of life.

Radio drama, gender discourse and vernacularization in Afghanistan

This paper explores how the New Home, New Life radio drama, produced by the BBC Afghan Education Projects Organization (BBC AEPO), integrates gender equity discourses into its production and therein vernacularizes them. It highlights the interplay between a number of internal and external dialogues that coalesce around the production’s dramatic content and cultural propriety. Analysis centres on the portrayal of a range of gendered cultural practices associated with marriage that the production’s funders identify as having negative social implications for girls and women. Examination of in-house production processes, as well as ongoing audience research engagement, reveal New Home, New Life’s representation of gender equity issues to be cautious and driven by an acute understanding that change can only be achieved if it proceeds cautiously and within a cultural frame of reference that is familiar to its listenership.

Utopia: 권력의 공리주의적 음모

This essay examines a British conspiracy thriller Utopia (2013-2014, broadcasted by Channel 4) written by Dennis Kelly whose writing encompasses all the dramatic genres: TV drama, play, musical script, radio drama and scenario. Utopia juxtaposes realistic and unrealistic elements in scenography and characterization, which creates an eerie atmosphere that the viewer cannot expect reality. The series portrays ordinary people who are fans of a graphic novel Utopia. They have suddenly been hunted down by killers of Network, a secret organization of which utopian project is to cut the human population which soon reaches eight billion back down to 0.7 billion. In order to accomplish their objective, Network will have 90 per cent of the human population sterilized by distributing flu vaccine. Their rationale is that the Earth and human being must perish for climate change and resource depletion that, as they claimed, overpopulation have caused. The series poses an ethical dilemma that the greater pleasure can only be achieved by the lesser people against the classical utilitarian doctrine; the present population must be declined for the greater welfare of the future generation.

\u201cCycles upon cycles, stories upon stories\u201d: contemporary audio media and podcast horror\u2019s new frights

During the last ten years the ever-fertile horror and Gothic genres have birthed a new type of fright-fiction: podcast horror. Podcast horror is a narrative horror form based in audio media and the properties of sound. Despite association with oral ghost tales, radio drama, and movie and TV soundscapes, podcast horror remains academically overlooked. Podcasts offer fertile ground for the revitalization and evolution of such extant audio-horror traditions, yet they offer innovation too. Characterized by their pre-recorded nature, individualized listening times and formats, often “amateur” or non-corporate production, and isolation from an ongoing media stream more typical of radio or TV, podcasts potentialize the instigation of newer audio-horror methods and traits. Podcast horror shows vary greatly in form and content, from almost campfire-style oral tales, comprising listener-produced and performed content (Drabblecast; Tales to Terrify; NoSleep); to audio dramas reminiscent of radio’s Golden Era (Tales from Beyond the Pale; 19 Nocturne Boulevard); to dramas delivered in radio-broadcast style (Welcome to Night Vale; Ice Box Theatre); to, most recently, dramas, which are themselves acknowledging and exploratory of the podcast form (TANIS; The Black Tapes Podcast; Lime Town). Yet within this broad spectrum, sympathies and conventions arise which often not only explore and expand notions of Gothic sound, but which challenge broader existing horror and Gothic genre norms. This article thus demonstrates the extent to which podcast horror uses its audio form, technology and mediation to disrupt and evolve Gothic/horror fiction, not through a cumulative chronological formulation of podcast horror but through a maintained and alternately synthesized panorama of forms. Herein new aspects of generic narration, audience, narrative and aesthetic emerge. Exploring a broad spectrum of American and British horror podcasts, this article shows horror podcasting to utilize podcasting’s novel means of horror and Gothic distribution/consumption to create fresh, unique and potent horror forms. This article reveals plot details about some of the podcasts examined.

D’Émile Wauters à Jean-Claude Idée. Postérité d’un thème romantique : La Folie d’Hugo van der Goes

By studying three works which illustrate the posterity of the Flemish primitive painter, Hugo van der Goes : “The madness of Hugo van der Goes” (Emile Wauters-1872), the radio play of the same name (Michel de Ghelderode-1935) and the one-act play : “The madness of van der Goes” (Jean-Claude Idée), we endeavour to show here that the interest in van der Goes is prompted mainly by the renewal of aesthetic standards and the development of the status of the artist which occurred specifically in the 19th Century and whose heirs we still are today.

Moja podróż na Księżyc

The article deals with the complicated fates of my radio drama Podr oz na Ksi ez yc [Journey to the Moon] . In it, I write about the inspiration I drew from the work on an article about the subject of death in early silent cinema. Researching the beginnings of world cinema, I could not have ignored the figure of Georges Melies, the great Cinema Magician. I decided to devote a theatre play to him, in which I confronted his idealistic attitude, which led him to ruin, with that of the rational attitude of the father of cinema, Louis Lumiere. I wrote the piece about the immortality that art. confers with the Teatr Atelier in Sopot in mind. The theatre, though, ceased operating and no other theatre was interested in the text. After several years, a coincidence led to me being invited to participate in an invited competition organised by ZAiKS and the radio station Dwojka. The drama Podr oz na Ksi ez yc took second place and was magnificently directed by Anna Wieczur-Bluszcz. The roles of these pioneers of cinema were filled by Jan Englert and Jerzy Radziwilowicz. In 2015 a jury led by Elzbieta Pleszkun-Olejniczakowa awarded the drama the Grand Prix at the “Dwa Teatry” [Two Theatres] Festival in Sopot.

Twórczość Tadeusza Różewicza w radiu

In the article I focus on the works of Tadeusz Rozewicz presented on Polish Radio, of which the most numerous are the works of dramatic art adapted for radio, such as: Akt przerywany [The Interrupted Act] , Bia l e ma lz e n stwo [White Wedding] , Kartoteka [The Card Index] , Kartoteka rozrzucona [The Card Index Scattered] , Odej ś cie G l odomora [The Starveling Leaves] , Pogrzeb po polsku [Polish funeral] , Stara kobieta wysiaduje [The Old Lady Sits Waiting] , Ś mieszny staruszek [The Funny Old Man] , Ś wiadkowie albo nasza ma l a stabilizacja [The Witnesses, or our little stabilisation], Wyszed l z domu [He Left Home] . Apart from this, Rozewicz’s one acters have been broadcast as radio dramas titled Teatr niekonsekwencji [Theatre of Inconsistency] . His poetry have been utilised with varying degrees of success, forming the basis for such poetic programmes as Radio w radiu [Radio on radio] , based on a selection of poems from the volumes U ś miechy [Smiles] , or Recykling [Recycling] . A separate group is constituted by programmes forming a kind of tribute to poetic masters: Prus ( Rozmowy w Alei Zdrowia ) or Staff ( Tadeusz R oz ewicz pisze Staffa ). Apart from this, I’m interested in programmes presenting the author’s prose in the collected work Matka odchodzi [Mother Leaves] , and also the cycle of five interviews Dialogi poet o w. Rozmowy o z yciu [Poets’ Dialogue. Conversations about life] , being the result of the meeting of Tadeusz Rozewicz and Czeslaw Milosz in the Teatr Slowacki in Krakow in July 1999. Comparing the radio versions of the texts of these dramas, I arrive at the conclusion that in the majority of cases the directors and engineers of these adapted dramas, falling back on the caveat “based on”, made bold choices, shortening individual scenes or omitting them entirely. In addition, I consider that the creators of these dramas were not attempting to excessively modernise Rozewicz’s art, maintaining their climate, their specific rhythm, based on their fragmentary nature, the sequence of scenes as well as the poetics of collage and recycling.

A Passion for the Arts

I first met Stefanie Preissner when she signed up as a volunteer leader with Lightbulb Youth Theatre in Mallow, Cork. Having recently begun a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies in University College Cork, Stefanie had the interest in the work that allowed her to quickly become integral to Lightbulb, facilitating workshops and directing performances. We established a good working relationship, devising, writing and directing within the youth theatre before forming our own theatre company, ‘With an F Productions’, allowing us to take on different projects. Stefanie’s move to Dublin, after graduating from Drama and Theatre Studies, allowed her to develop her playwriting skills leading to the writing of ‘Solpadine is My Boyfriend’. This play was subsequently produced by the company enjoying a sell-out run in Dublin before touring internationally to Bucharest, Edinburgh and Australia, and – as a radio play – becoming RTE’s most downloaded podcast. Stefanie has gone on to write for RTE, with the successful series ‘Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope’ now in its second season and is also writing for Channel 4 in the UK and First Look Media in the US. Last year, I hosted Stefanie in the renamed ‘Department of Theatre’ to talk with students ...

‘The Pictures are Better on Radio’: A Visual Analysis of American Radio Drama from the 1920s to the 1950s

This essay takes a sensory approach to the study of radio listening by looking at American radio dramas of the 1920s through the 1950s. Analysis of radio writing handbooks, fan magazines, publicity and radio content from the period will show that radio producers, writers and actors conceptualised the art of radio listening as acutely visual, despite its auditory format. The medium invited the listener to participate actively in the visualisation process, to formulate mental pictures of characters, settings and scenes through the personalised act of listening. And yet, radio practitioners endeavoured to guide their listeners towards similar visual conceptions of the fictional worlds of radio drama by drawing upon familiar images and stereotypes already in broad circulation. To do this, they created a multi-sensory effect by layering sound, combining speech, silence, music and sound effects to kindle the imagination of listeners. They utilised identifiable dialects, music and language that correlated to stereotypical depictions of race, gender, class, ethnicity, nationality and place in order to create a shared portrait of characters or settings. This essay will also consider the impact of the concurrent transmission of dramatic radio content on multiple media platforms. The sensory experience of listening was no longer strictly auditory when audiences received additional visual cues through other media. Because many radio shows also had counterparts in cinema, novels, comic strips and later television shows, the process of visualising radio content for listeners could not be detached from the experiences of engaging its stories through other sensory formats. Listeners could also gain visual familiarity with actors and settings by perusing fan magazines or seeing promotional advertising. The conscious reliance on images broadly shared in the media culture as well as the multi-media consumption of radio content allowed for a listening experience that was as much unifying as individualised.

Jacob Smith. Eco-Sonic Media. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. 272 pp.

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe CI ReviewJacob Smith. Eco-Sonic Media. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. 272 pp.Neil VermaNeil Verma Search for more articles by this author Neil Verma is assistant professor of sound studies in the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at Northwestern University. He is the author of Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama (2012) and coeditor of Anatomy of Sound: Norman Corwin and Media Authorship (2016). His current project is tentatively titled How Sounds Think: Making Strange Radio in the Podcasting Age.PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 43, Number 4Summer 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/692394 Views: 123Total views on this site © 2017 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Motive des Ausbruchs und des Aufbruchs in den Hörspielen Ingeborg Bachmanns

Bachman wrote only three radio plays, all of them in the fifties of the XXth century. In spite of different settings, all of them have the same topic: escape from society (either into dream or to an island or to the isolation of a couple wishing to live only for love) and utopia. In the first and third play the male protagonists fail however, unable to give up their bourgeois lives. In the third play the female protagonist is a victim of her ability to love without restrictions. This locates The Good God of Manhattan close to the feminist prose of Bachmanns later years. In the second radio play, The Cikadas, the existence on an island separated from society is judged in the negative. All attempts to win utopian happiness end with defeat; although they are valued differently, they show that in spite of all efforts mankind is not able to reach the ideal of truth and love.

Thinking around Genre: The Moral Narrative and Femininity in Kenyan Popular Media

AbstractIn this article, I revisit a familiar narrative format of the moral narrative that I argue is used to narrate stories of (especially) women in the public sphere in Kenya. Reading a range of media texts, I trace a pattern of representation that I identify as contained within a recognizable genre of the moral narrative and use this genre to identify a structure of narrative of issues around gender and sexuality in Kenya. The examples are drawn from a popular radio drama program as well as from popular press reports of wayward women. The article also engages counter-narratives created by women such Vera Sidika and Huddah Monroe who, by publicly displaying their near-naked bodies in public platforms, create room for a counter-reading of discourses of gender and sexuality in the Kenyan public imaginary. This article will push the boundaries for reading popular cultural forms caught within generic constraints and reflect on the value counter-readings have in complicating readings of gender and sexuality in Kenya more generally.

Realización, lenguaje y elecciones narrativas de radioteatro: tres aproximaciones a la creación de espacios sonoros en el tiempo

Crear en el ámbito del tiempo un espacio que no existe en ningún otro lugar y hacer que en ese espacio actúen los personajes es lo que denominamos radioteatro. El radioteatro es un género de ficción que tuvo destacada presencia en las principales cadenas de radio españolas hasta finales de la década de los ochenta. Desde entonces, salvo excepciones como, entre 1994 y 2003, las celebradas Sobrenatural e Historias de Juan José Plans en Radio 1 y la apuesta de Radio 3 entre los años 1999 y 2003, con la emisión del serial de Carlos Faraco Cuando Juan y Tula fueron a Siritinga y otras muchas ficciones dramatizadas para radio, el formato ha tenido escaso protagonismo en la radio española. Sin embargo, a partir de la segunda década de este siglo, que ha asistido incluso a la convocatoria del Congreso Internacional de Radioteatro impulsado por la Escuela TEA FM de Zaragoza, ya por su IV edición, crece el interés entre profesionales y estudiantes por el radioteatro. Igualmente, las grandes cadenas empiezan a recuperar, aun tímidamente, este tipo de programas. Dos ejemplos: en la radio pública estatal espacios como su producción estelar serializada El Quijote del siglo XXI, además de otros contenidos de ficción con periodicidad semestral; y, desde la radio privada, en la Cadena SER, la serie de Mónica León Negra y Criminal o el Cuento de Navidad, con el que ha venido felicitando a los oyentes las tres últimas temporadas. En este artículo se aborda el concepto de radioteatro, otras expresiones de ficción radiofónica y el devenir de este género de programación por las parrillas de las principales cadenas de radio a lo largo de su historia. Finalmente, se ofrecen los resultados de tres aproximaciones a la ficción dramatizada para la radio, a través de diferentes maneras de abordar la narración, la acción y el lenguaje radiofónico en tres obras producidas por Radio Nacional de España: Cabeza de Vaca: Las vidas de Alvar Núñez, Herederos del tiempo y El corazón de las tinieblas

La ficción sonora y la realización en directo: el reto de RNE

El equipo Ficción sonora RNE afronta desde hace años ficciones de complejo montaje sonoro, larga duración y ricas recreaciones de espacios añadiendo a ello un reto: la realización no solo en directo, sino también sobre un escenario frente a una audiencia que ve y escucha la obra. Se muestra sobre un escenario cómo se hace la radio, a la vez que se emite. No se pierde la expresividad que tiene el directo y no se renuncia a las recreaciones sonoras ricas y envolventes. En este artículo estudiamos el proceso de producción de estas obras de formato ficcional con objeto de demostrar que la radio puede afrontar cualquier contenido, siempre y cuando esté adaptado al medio.

Reutilización de la ficción sonora en la Cadena Ser. El caso de Podium Podcast

El género de ficción fue protagonista en la programación radiofónica de la posguerra por adaptación al imperativo dictatorial en los indicativos de titularidad privada. En este contexto, la Cadena SER abanderó el radio drama en España, cuyos años dorados se concentraron entre las décadas de los cuarenta y los setenta. A colación del resurgir de este género en la oferta mediática nacional, se plantea el objetivo de investigar si las nuevas formas de producción y distribución digitales facilitan no solo la oferta de nuevos contenidos de ficción, sino también y especialmente la reutilización de fondos de archivo de la Cadena SER, a través del estudio de Podium Podcast. Para ello, se analiza, en primer lugar, el modelo de gestión de contenidos del grupo y, después, la visibilización de fondos de archivo en el caso analizado. Con un enfoque cualitativo, la metodología aplicada se fundamenta en las entrevistas en profundidad y la observación indirecta. Los resultados obtenidos permiten concluir que desde Prisa Radio se reconoce el valor de este género desde el punto de vista documental y, aunque olvidados durante años, recientemente se apuesta por su reutilización contextualizada de acuerdo a criterios periodísticos y culturales, fundamentalmente a través de podcasts.

Evaluating a multicomponent social behaviour change communication strategy to reduce intimate partner violence among married couples: study protocol for a cluster randomized trial in Nepal

BackgroundIntimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant public health issue that affects 1 in 3 women globally and a similarly large number of women in Nepal. Over the past decade, important policy and programmatic steps have been taken to address violence against women in Nepal. There remains a dearth of evidence on the effectiveness of primary violence prevention strategies. The Change Starts at Home study begins to fill this gap by utilizing a multi-component social behaviour change communication (SBCC) strategy involving a radio drama and community mobilization to shift attitudes, norms and behaviours that underpin IPV perpetration in Nepal.Methods/DesignThe study uses a concurrent mixed-methods design. The quantitative aspect of the evaluation is a pair-matched, repeated cross-sectional 2-armed, single-blinded cluster trial (RCT: N = 36 clusters, 1440 individuals), comparing a social behaviour change communication (SBCC) strategy to radio programming alone for its impact on physical and / or sexual IPV at the end of programming (12 months’ post-baseline) and 6-months post the cessation of project activities (18-months post baseline). The qualitative aspects of the design include several longitudinal approaches to understand the impact of the intervention and to examine mechanisms of change including in-depth interviews with participants (N = 18 couples), and focus group discussions with community leaders (N = 3 groups), and family members of participants (N = 12 groups). Treatment effects will be estimated with generalized logistic mixed models specified to compare differences in primary outcome from baseline to 12-month follow-up, and baseline to 18-months follow-up in accordance with intention-to-treat principles.DiscussionThe study rigorously evaluates the effectiveness of a promising strategy to prevent IPV. The results of the trial will be immediately useful for governmental, nongovernmental, and donor funded programs targeting partner violence or social norms that underpin it. Findings of the study will also contribute to global knowledge on the effectiveness of media and community engagement as a primary prevention strategy for IPV.Trial registrationTrial was registered in clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02942433, 10/13/2016, retrospectively registered.

Sounding Postmodernity: Narrative Voices in the Radio Adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark

Alasdair Gray’s novel Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) eludes generic categorization by crossing the boundaries between dystopian fiction, fantasy novel, life writing, and fiction marked by magic realism. In postmodern fashion, it plays with spatiotemporal frameworks and narrative order, shifts narrative voices, and perspectives and uses a multiplicity of presentational modes including dialogue and scholarly text commentary with encyclopedic annotations. In its “Epilogue,” the novel features metalepsis when it introduces the author, who talks to his protagonist about his work. The question arises how the novel’s radio play adaptation, first broadcast by the BBC on 1 November 2014, translates this playfulness into its own semiotic system. This paper particularly focuses on the narratological category of “voice” and explores what happens when narrators’ and characters’ voices are actualized in radio drama, how the radio play uses voice-over narration, voice qualities and the doubling of parts to create a recognizable as well as surprising aural storyworld. It also analyzes how sound techniques and music are employed to create narrative structures. Because of their medial instantaneousness and evanescence, radio plays arguably have to rely on disambiguation to make themselves accessible to a listening audience. However, as this paper shows, they also have a range of radiophonic techniques at their disposal to create narrativity on their own terms.

Adapting War Horse: Cognition, the Spectator, and a Sense of Play by Toby Malone and Christopher J. Jackman

Reviewed by: Adapting War Horse: Cognition, the Spectator, and a Sense of Play by Toby Malone and Christopher J. Jackman Drew Chappell Adapting War Horse: Cognition, the Spectator, and a Sense of Play. By Toby Malone and Christopher J. Jackman. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016; pp. 114. In Adapting War Horse authors Toby Malone and Christopher Jackman explore from multiple angles the phenomenon that is War Horse: novel, radio play, stage production, filmed stage production, and feature film. With a particular focus on the puppetry of the National Theatre's stage production, the authors use this narrative as a case study for understanding the relationship among audience, text, and image. The case study highlights some key pieces of performance that many spectators take for granted: the imagination essential to create a living thing and environment out of nonliving materials; the process of adapting a piece of literature (which was itself a free adaption of historical events) twice over; and the emotional dimensions of a story centered on an animal in the midst of human tragedy. As the world approaches the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day commemorating the end of World War I, the War Horse project as a whole strikes a nostalgic chord for me. Pairing a talking animal's narrative journey with serious commentary brings me back to stories of my youth, such as Watership Down and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. In these tales the animals were used as metaphors for humans at the mercy of larger forces. It was easy for children to identify with anthropomorphized animals, perhaps because they were smaller then children and thus nonthreatening or because they resembled stuffed animals with which children often sleep at night. As an adult, horses share that childlike fantastical quality. Horses are a collection of contradictions: strong and vulnerable, tame and wild, independent and bound to service. "Remembering" the Great War (of which most readers/audience members have no direct communal knowledge) seems to me of a piece with these animal stories from so long ago—stories viewed through a lens of nostalgia and safe distance. The book is structured as a series of interrelated chapters, each examining one aspect of the War Horse narrative (which focuses on the thoroughbred Joey) in its various incarnations. First, the authors circumscribe the specific Handspring Puppet Company/National Theatre production, with a focus on the playfulness of the puppet artistry. In this section they define and describe the puppet construction and manipulation strategies, focusing on the process of bringing life to the character of Joey. I appreciated the detail in this section and the way in which the authors wove in various approaches to the understanding of "horse" (down to the micro-level of the puppets' eyes and the effect of lighting design on their sheen). Next, they branch out to the other incarnations of the story—book, film, radio play—exploring the unique ways that each of these forms conceptualizes both the emotional center of the story and the audience's experience. The authors then dig deeper into the theory behind the process of imagination and the end goal of emotional connection, bolstering their arguments with theory from (among others) Peter Brook and Bruce McConachie. In this section they ask compelling questions about how we form emotional attachments with characters—both human and nonhuman—and how play functions within this intellectual/emotional exercise. There is much to appreciate in this section, especially as it explores the role of fantasy and imagination on audience understanding and investment. Finally, the authors explore other fine points of the National's production, including marketing and translation into multiple languages. This section contextualizes the work done within the production and tackles the question of how did a book for young people become a worldwide phenomenon? Where did the multiple adaptations "go right"? What can we learn as scholars and practitioners from the long journeys of War Horse? As a study, War Horse hits several high notes: it articulates the grand experiment that the National and Handspring undertook, with its reliance upon audience buy-in for its central character/characterization; and it situates this production within a frame of contemporary work, as well as...

The Crime of ‘Making Real’ in All That Fall

Examining the potential crime in All That Fall as a crime of reification, this essay seeks to expose two ontological levels within the radio play that are governed by opposing temporalities. It concludes with an assertion that attempting to ‘make real’ distorts an intuitive experience of reality.

Narrativity and Sound in German Radio Play Adaptations of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy

In line with the strong emphasis on visuality in the wake of the “visual turn” in literary and cultural studies, graphic novel adaptations of literary texts have recently been the objects of scholarly study and narratological theory building. Much less attention, if any, has been accorded to radio play adaptations of novels like Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy . An analysis of radio play adaptations acquires a special significance in the case of this highly enigmatic work, which makes a seriously playful use of postmodern narrative strategies. It is perhaps above all this feature which made the adaptation of the novel’s first instalment, City of Glass , into a graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazucchelli so successful. While the graphic novel visualizes characteristic features of its mother text, this paper explores the different modes of narrative sound in three German radio play adaptations of Auster’s novel. Alfred Behrens’ Stadt aus Glas , Katharina Bihler’s Schlagschatten , and Norbert Schaeffer’s Hinter verschlossenen Turen employ narrative devices like voices in both German and English, the evocation of city soundscapes, the narrative uses of music as well as issues of the simultaneity and/or difference of story and discourse time. The narrative auralization of Auster’s novels in the radio plays under discussion can be shown to foreground non-visual aspects of the pre-texts and to add further dimensions for interpretation that underline the usefulness of audionarratological analysis for adaptation studies.