Quotes about Audio Drama

Radio Drama Quotes from Radio Tales of the Strange and Fantastic

“Anyone who’s ever listened to radio drama will testify to the fact that a play you hear will (remain) in your mind – twelve years later you’ll remember it vividly. And the reason you’ll remember it vividly is because you’ve done the work… it lives in your imagination.”– John Madden, Director, NPR Star Wars audio dramas

“What secret ingredient does audio theater possess that makes it so seductive…? The answer…lies not in a special ingredient, but in the lack of one. Audio is blind. Audio is the most intensely visual of media precisely because of its sightlessness.”

– Yuri Rasovsky, The Well-Tempered Audio Dramatist

“I still think radio is probably the greatest entertainment medium ever invented. It made the audience work, and I think television audiences don’t have to work—that’s why they fall asleep half of the time.

“…what makes radio really exciting is the all-round creativity of it. The writer creates the original, then the director creates the ambiance for the actors, and the brilliant technicians who manipulate the tapes, dials, sounds and music create the atmosphere. But the most creative of all participants in the joys of radio are the listeners, the audience….The listener is set designer, costume designer, make-up man, and even the casting department. They ‘see’ the characters they hear, then put them into the drama quite literally, in make-up, into the set, the wardrobe, even the mood and atmosphere.”

– Vincent Price, 1970 interview

“Science fiction is perhaps the most important audio theatre genre in the 21st century and if one includes the related genres of horror and fantasy, these works of creative imagination, technical prowess and infinite possibilities are the most entertaining artists in this field have to offer.”

– David “Mark Time” Ossman, Firesign Theatre