OTR National Radio Drama Competition

OnlineTheatreReview is pleased to announce its exciting new national radio drama competition, in association with Burst Radio. We are looking to encourage new writers in Bristol, Cambridge, Durham and Oxford to experiment with this fantastic and underrated medium, and to give them a platform from which they can have their work produced and judged on a national scale.

Competition Format

Parallel heats will be run by OTR’s teams in Cambridge, Oxford, Durham and Bristol, and the best script from each city will be produced and broadcast on local radio stations, and made available to the rest of the country online.

The four completed productions will then be judged by John Dryden, an accomplished professional writer, producer and director of radio drama, who will select an overall national winner. The writer of the best play will get direct feedback and advice from John on how they might improve their future writing and make progress in the industry.

Entry Requirements

We are looking for original scripts of any genre and on any subject. Scripts must have an overall performance time of less than ten minutes, and must not have been previously produced or published. You may submit as many scripts as you like.

Submission Details

Send your scripts as an email attachment to Helena Blackstone at editor@bristoltheatrereview.com by midnight on Thursday 12th January 2012. In the body of your email include your name and the title of your script. Do not write your name on the script itself. Winners and runners up will be announced at the end of January.

Useful Tips on Writing for Radio

BBC Writers’ Room

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/writing/tips_radiodrama.shtml

Independent Radio Drama Productions

http://www.irdp.co.uk/scripts.htm

Great Broadcast Examples of Professional Writing

John Dryden

Judge of OTR’s Radio Drama Competition

John is producer, director and writer and has worked all over the world making location-based radio dramas, mainly for BBC Radio 4. He is now a director of Goldhawk Productions.

Last year, his real-life US drama about the collapse of Lehman Brothers bank, THE DAY THAT LEHMAN DIED won a prestigious Peabody Award, as well as Sony and Wincott awards. SEVERED THREADS, an original three-part thriller set and recorded on three continents has just been nominated for a Writers Guild of Great Britain award for best radio drama. “Q & A”, a ten-part drama about an Indian street-kid who wins a TV quiz show, was broadcast on Radio 4 in ten parts to great acclaim, winning a Sony Gold Award and leading to the making of the Oscar-winning film SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Other radio dramas include, A TOKYO MURDER, a three-parter based on the real murder of a young British teacher in Japan, HOW TO MAKE YOUR FIRST BILLION, a drama documentary for television and radio about a start-up in Silicon Valley, and a number of literary adaptations including; THE CAIRO TRILOGY, from the novels by Naguib Mahfouz made in Egypt and staring Omar Sharif, which won a Sony Award; a multi-award winning dramatisation of Vikran Seth’s A SUITABLE BOY which was made in India; Margaret Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE; Charles Dickens’ BLEAK HOUSE, another Sony Gold Award winner; and a feature-length dramatization of Robert Harris’s thriller FATHERLAND. He is currently working on an ambitious three-part drama, PANDEMIC about a devastating bio-terrorist attack on world cities, which is being recorded in Thailand and the UK to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2011. He is also directing a drama about England’s failed bid to host the FIFA World Cup and a dramatization of Charles Dickens’ MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT set in India to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2012.