Scriptwriting for Radio Plays & Podcasts

Workshop facilitator Jenny Davis will cover writing for radio including monologue and dialogue, use of narration, scene setting, character, structure, style, themes, intent, authorial voice, use of effects in workshop 1. Jenny will also discuss turning short stories, monologues and oral histories into radio drama and there will be time to discuss individual project ideas . Workshop 2 will focus on participants’ projects including what works with an audience. During her second visit to Esperance in March Jenny will work 1:1 with participants on script development. Locally based actor and producer Kym “Bid” Bidstrup will then assist participants to record and edit their plays to be broadcast on community radio and to be presented as podcasts at the Readers and Writers event on May 28th – 30th.

What to Bring

For a group exercise can you bring a short account of an event in your life that has some emotional significance for you. This can be a big event or a very small, even a fleeting, moment. You can bring it written or you can recount it verbally. We will be sharing our moments, so choose something you are comfortable with sharing. It can be from earliest childhood or can have occurred only yesterday.

If you also happen to have an idea for a story you might write for a radio presentation do bring it along. It could be an outline or a couple of paragraphs –whatever stage you are at.

About the Presenter

Jenny Davis, OAM, brings to Esperance her vast experience as a director, actor and writer. Jenny has written and directed plays since her childhood - a long while considering she was nominated last year as 2020 Senior Australian of the Year.  Jenny scripted and acted in radio drama for the ABC for more than 10 years;  her play Dear Heart was adapted to a novel published by Allen and Unwin. Jenny is celebrated variously as the founding director of WA Youth Theatre and Minchin’s inspiration, the founder of Agelink Theatre, and the Juniper WA Champion for Seniors Award recipient in 2016.

Agelink Theatre’s charter was to create plays from oral histories. In 2010, Jenny wrote the play Captive Wives, based on the memories of farming women in Esperance in the 1960s.  After 25 years, Agelink Theatre morphed in 2018 into Theatre 180. Jenny’s current play – a new dramatisation of AB Facey’s A FORTUNATE LIFE – is currently touring the state for Theatre 180 with a new concept, CinemaStage, whereby the performers appear live on stage in cinemas against a filmed backdrop. Jenny is now writing a new play for 2021, using the same concept, about the loss and finding of HMAS Sydney.