Radio Commissions

I’ve just heard today that, after more than nine months of debates and back-and-forth, Radio 4 are commissioning my trilogy of Afternoon Plays, (very) provisionally entitled Negative Signs of Progress.

The idea of the play is to track the response to a kidnapping in the Middle East, from the perspective of the first world, the second world and the third world. I don’t really mean the second world as in the Communist block, instead I’m thinking of the nascent institutions of global governance, the EU, the UN. The first and second plays are probably two-handers, the second a three-hander. Each play unfolds in real time and is connected narratively to the others, though each should stand pretty much on its own.

We have a complicated scheduling process ahead. The plays are intended to be broadcast on consecutive days so that the connections between them can be heard by regular - non time-shifting - radio-listeners. It’s being made, I think, by Radio Wales. They probably want to record in Autumn 2012 which gives me relatively little time to write three plays (132 minutes of radio). This will be fun.