Radio Waves

Available for over a year

By Magdalene Bird, Jack Fairey and Mohsen Shah. It is 2065 and Captain Avery Jones is an astronaut on a solo voyage into deep space. Armed with a ‘Sonophone’, her mission is to try and pick up extra-terrestrial audio activity. But the Sonophone also receives all the radio waves emanating from earth and Avery finds herself tuning in to a myriad of stories. We listen in to Rhea who is being interviewed by an android about her life story and we eavesdrop into a virtual world where talent agency manager Suzy has to manage the fall-out from her client public trashing of his sponsor. In the centenary year of audio drama Radio Waves looks forward, not backward, exploring the human impulses to narrativise our lives and takes a sideways look at the way current media trends interact with audio drama. Cast: Avery Jones ….. Natalie Simpson Spaceship computer/ Lambert ….. Michael Shelford Rhea ..… Ann Mitchell Derrick ….. Sam Pamphilon Suzy ..… Cassie Layton Sound Design by Alisdair McGregor and Calum Perrin Production Assistant: Annie Keates Thorpe Directed by Jeremy Mortimer and Calum Perrin Executive Producer: Joby Waldman A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4. Jack Fairey is a writer and theatre maker. He studied Drama and Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, before completing an MA in Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia. Playwriting credits include: The Sun, The Mountain, and Me (Union Theatre, August 2022), The Many Lives of Nellie Bly (UK Tour, Summer 2022), The Orator Trilogy (Radio Plays, 2020), and Wrath of Achilles (Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2019). Magdalene Bird is a writer and comedy talent agent. As a writer her commissions include: Theatre 503, BFI, ITV2, Cambridge Junction, Little Island Productions, AMC studios and more. Her work has been shortlisted for Theatre 503’s 2020 International Playwriting Award and longlisted for the 2021 Papatango New Writing Award. She was recently chosen for Hampstead Theatre’s Inspire programme. Mohsen Shah is a writer of screenplays, radio plays and video-games. He has developed TV shows with Working Title, The Forge and BBC Studios amongst others and has written films for Paramount Studios and Image Nation. He most recently co-wrote the film Lumbu for BBC Films/BFI. He lives in Cambridge.