Originally published in print March 2021.
Ursula: First, can you tell me a little bit about Playback?
Robert: Playback is a podcast play consisting of three different episodes of three different podcasts and it follows one person who hosts all three, whose name is Kate Morgan.
U: What attracted you to radio theatre over a traditional dramatic format?
R: To be honest it was mostly the pandemic. I love in-person theatre and I love sharing space with people and I love the energy that an in-person performance has and the fact that it feels like it’s all just there in the moment. Partially I think what it is that podcasting, which is the form that the play takes, has a similar improvisational quality and a feeling like it’s kind of happening right in front of you. As a rule it feels very natural, so it’s not in-person and it’s definitely not completely ad-libbed, but that was part of it. So yeah, in absence of being able to be in a room with people, in a sense the kind of intimacy you get with podcasting is the next best thing.
U: Has COVID-19 impacted your creative process? If it has, how so?
R: Yes, it definitely has. I mean COVID has impacted everything and the creative process is part of it. I suppose I’ll start with the positives, which always feels weird given that we’re talking about COVID, but like it has given me a lot more time to write and a lot more time to consume things and to watch. Like I’ve watched and listened to and read a lot more this year than I have in previous years. And a similar thing, I live way out in the country in County Meath and I live with my family and when I want to be alone I go on walks and I end up going on these long walks just through fields and fields and fields, which gives me a lot of time to think. In terms of negative impacts it’s a lot harder to bounce ideas off each other – it’s a lot harder to, you know, kind of have that contact with other people in that easy way. This is kind of all from a writers’ perspective, I wrote it and I did produce Playback as well, but from a writer’s perspective I do miss just kind of sitting down with somebody over a coffee and chatting without having to schedule like an hour aside to do that.
U: What do you enjoy about radio theatre in particular, compared to traditional in-person performances?
R: One of the things I love about it is that, and I kind of touched on this before, is that they both have a very similar energy in terms of like an improvisation that is happening right in front of you that’s in the present. With a radio play, because it’s pre-recorded, it isn’t [right in front of you] even though it feels that way, so it kind of creates this extra complexity to it that I find really interesting. That’s something I really thought about when I was writing Playback. While, you know, traditional theatre is happening in front of you and it’s in the moment, a radio play [also] feels that way and it sounds that way, but it’s not that way. That is a very interesting thing to me, and this is further contrasted from like television where between, like, cuts and different changing shots of changing locations – it feels like it’s not in front of you and you know that it’s all filmed in the past. Radio theatre occupies a place in my mind where it feels like the present but it isn’t the present, and that’s what really drew me to it as opposed to doing a zoom play or filming stuff.
U: What inspired you to create Playback?
R: I’ve always been really interested in podcasting as a form. I think it’s a really fascinating one in terms of, like, as I listen to a lot of podcasts with a lot of similar hosts and you get this image of them that, to a listener, kind of feels 3 dimensional, especially because they’re so conversational and improvisational. In reality you know it’s not [real]. A podcast is a form of performance as that type of conversation that doesn’t actually exist, but it feels like it exists and that was a really interesting idea for me as a writer. Because all plays are also a performance, so like the way that podcasting blurs the line between performance and not performance.
Also just in terms of podcasts that specifically inspired the show, Do Go On was a big one which is three Australian comedians [who] tell each other a report from history every week. Three Castles Burning really inspired Act Three, it’s a podcast about the social history of Dublin. And for Act One I’d say it’s a podcast called Finding Drago, which is described as a true crime podcast without the crime. It’s about these two guys trying to find out who wrote a piece of fanfiction.
U: Finally, is there anything the audience should know before listening to PLAYBACK? Do you have any advice for people curious about getting into Radio Theatre?
R: I always just recommend that people listen to it like it’s a podcast. Don’t sit down and feel like you’re watching a play; go out and walk or maybe [while] you’re cooking dinner or, you know, whatever it is you do when you listen to podcasts. Just do that and treat it like that, I think that’s when it’s at its best.
[In terms of] advice for people curious about getting into radio theatre, I would say think about why you’re doing it as a radio play. What is it about this story that works best purely done through audio? Probably the best example I can think of a radio play is a radio musical 36 Questions where it’s all told through voice notes on a phone. Within [that are] these musical numbers which are kind of more describing emotion. But yeah, so think about why the story you want to tell would work best purely done through sound and then kind of take it from there. I’m a massive proponent for thinking about the form as being just as [important], if not more important, than the content. Also make sure you have a team who you want to work with. I was absolutely blessed by having a phenomenal director in Gelsey Beavers-Damron and some just top quality, stellar actors in Juliet Arpack, Lauren Kelly and Oisin Reilly. And, of course, Grace Kim, who’s a supremely talented composer who did all of the music that you hear within the show and was a dream to work with, and fantastic Jane Loughman who produced all the show’s gorgeous artwork. They were all just so great and so fun to work with and so collaborative. That really made everything so much easier, I mean that’s obviously not just true of radio theatre, but you know what you make is never going to be as important as the people you make it with – that is what I believe.
Playback is available to listen to on the DU Players’ Spotify.
