Creating a Radio Play Out of Thin Air
Tonight’s experiment began with a scene from Norton Street.
The original scene is straightforward enough. Bornless One is experiencing a wave of anxiety and disorientation. Mike responds in his usual calm and slightly absurd manner. The dialogue is short, direct, and surprisingly funny in places.
On its own, the scene runs less than two thousand characters.
But lately I’ve been exploring a different possibility.
What happens if a dramatic scene is treated as a radio broadcast rather than a stage play?
The first step was to remove the stage directions and leave only the dialogue. That immediately transformed the piece from theater into something closer to an old radio drama.
Then we began adding the elements that have become part of the growing KGOD universe.
A station identification appeared.
“This is station Kay Gee Oh Dee… Kay GOD… the station that makes it…” If you don’t spell it out, and you just say “KGOD”, it’s invariably pronounced “K’GOUWD”
Then came a station break. Then sports. Then weather. Then news. Then commercials.
One by one, the interruptions began appearing between sections of the original dialogue, not replacing the play but surrounding and supporting and reinforcing it. The result was something unexpected. Instead of distracting from the scene, the interruptions seemed to amplify it.
Bornless One’s growing panic was suddenly taking place inside a strange late-night radio world where eternity insurance could be purchased, the weather forecast included enlightenment probabilities, and sports scores might involve several incarnations.
The original scene remained intact. Every line survived. Yet the surrounding context changed completely.
What started as a brief exchange between two characters became a complete broadcast.
By the end of the process, the script had grown from roughly sixteen hundred characters to almost five thousand, filling nearly all of the available space while still preserving the original dramatic structure.
This is one of the discoveries that continues to surprise me. The play itself was written many decades ago. The dialogue already exists. The characters already exist.
What is happening now is not really writing in the traditional sense. It is closer to arranging, adapting, producing, and exploring alternate forms that were not available when the play was originally created.
A stage play becomes a radio play. A radio play becomes a musical. A musical becomes dozens of different performances, each generated in a different style.
The same script can become comedy, drama, jazz, psychedelic rock, gospel, doo-wop, country, or something that has no obvious name at all.
Every version reveals something different hiding inside the original material. Tonight’s KGOD broadcast began as a short scene from Norton Street. A few hours later it had become a complete late-night radio show waiting for its first audience.
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Here’s the Bardo bus.
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See You At The Top!!!
gorby