Play for Voices is a new podcast of international audio drama. Our show presents new productions of contemporary and classic audio plays from around the world, exploring their aesthetic, social, and political contexts through inventive, multilingual sound design and interviews with authors, translators, and other interesting people. We feature English-language plays and plays in English translation. Radio drama—“plays for voices” written to be heard rather than seen—enjoyed great popularity in the U.S. during the “Golden Age” of radio, from the 1920s to the 1950s. Since then, audio dramas have occupied a marginal place in the U.S. radio landscape, but the form has remained vibrant elsewhere in the world, often on public broadcasting networks. Audio drama is a highly flexible dramatic form that encourages experimentation and encompasses narrative, lyric, serials, and standalone plays of varying lengths. Inspired by the resurgence of audio storytelling in the United States, Play for Voices aims to build an inclusive audience of listeners for international audio drama in English and English translation, and to promote dialogue among the literary, translation, theater, audio, and sound art communities.
Date | Title & Description | Contributors |
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2021-04-24 | One Fewer Night in Baghdad by Pedro M. VĂlloraTranslated from the Spanish by Lina Ferreira Cabeza-VanegasOne Fewer Night in Baghdad is a contemporary take on the story of Scheherazade and the Caliph.One Fewer Night in Baghdad was directed by Sarah Mont... | |
2020-09-14 | In this episode we’re proud to present Illegal Helpers, a documentary play written by German-Italian playwright Maxi Obexer, translated into English by Neil Blackadder, and arranged for audio presentation by Play for Voices. Illegal Helpers was recorde... | |
2018-10-11 | Anaesthesia by Albert OstermaierTranslated from the German by Charlotte CollinsAnaesthesia is a short solo audio play written by acclaimed German author Albert Ostermaier and translated by Charlotte Collins. In Anaesthesia, which was commissioned by th... | |
2018-01-02 | IT'S COLD AND IT'S GETTING SO DARK by Carmen-Francesca Banciu Translated by Elena Mancini SYNOPSIS Set in Berlin shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, IT'S COLD AND IT'S GETTING SO DARK centers around Deborah, a former radio journalist in the G... |
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2017-10-01 | PLEASE ENTER DESTINATION by Tereza Semotamová Translated by Barbora Růžičková SYNOPSIS A young couple, Helena and Honza, on a weekend drive to visit bourgeois friends, find that their new GPS has a life of its own and their friendly hitchhiker is a d... |
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2017-09-01 | That Deep Ocean… by Ana Cândida Carneiro SYNOPSIS In Brazilian-Italian author Ana Cândida Carneiro’s That Deep Ocean..., a two-character audio play written in Italian and translated by Stephen Pidcock, a single day in a woman’s life becomes an epic j... |
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2017-02-21 | I Regret Nothing by Csaba Székely Part Two of Two The second half of I Regret Nothing picks up the story of retired Romanian secret service officer Dominic Cormoş as he comes face to face with the repercussions of his past and makes a decision that w... |
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2016-12-21 | I Regret Nothing by Csaba Székely Part One of Two It’s the summer of 2006, and Dominic Cormoş, a retired agent of the Securitate--the notorious secret police of Communist Romania--is living alone in his Transylvania apartment. With media coverage... |
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