Andy Prendergast

Writer of To The Broad Shore directed by Noreen Kershaw     

'Thursday I’m at a medical conference, Friday I’m sat with seven others in a studio scribbling scenes for a radio drama inspired by a barking dog and a door slam'

Andy on his experiences of writing The Radio Play’s The Thing
One Thursday I’m sat in the lecture theatre of a medical conference in Portugal scribbling notes on research in meningitis; on Friday I’m sat seven others in a London studio scribbling the opening scenes of a radio drama inspired by the sounds of a barking dog and a slamming door.  How did I get to be here?

Getting the call
The phone call from Channel 4’s executive producer of The Radio Play’s The Thing came after a particularly long day on call at Great Ormond Street Hospital, where my real life was played out as a paediatrician.  I’d entered the competition some months before. Very last minute, I almost missed a flight to South Africa (where I was due to be working in a rural HIV clinic) as I grappled with my synopsis, dramatis personae and dialogue.  This wasn’t the first writing competition I’d entered, but it was the first one I’d ever heard back from.  And it was my first foray into radio, too, though I’d tried my hand at theatre and film writing.

The idea
The idea, though (one that had been slow-cooking for some time) was destined for radio.  They say you can go anywhere with radio, and the couple in my story were returning to the Alps after thirty years. Back then, they were planning the start of their lives together; now they're planning the end. The idea of ‘suicide tourism’ stuck in my mind after reading a moving interview with a man who made such a journey to Zurich with his wife, when her neurodegenerative condition became too unbearable to carry on living.  The emotional and physical journey this couple had to make was something I thought had real dramatic potential.

Writing within constraints …
It’s one thing sitting down at your own desk to write a scene of dialogue, but the pressure of trying to do it in three minutes, surrounded by other people … Why was that dog barking?  Who was slamming that door?  Blank.  Gradually, rules emerged:

• Look for tension
• Use different layers of sound
• Juxtapose unusual characters or situations
• Have several things going on at once
• Whose story is this, anyway?
• Confuse your audience a bit

And as we read through each other’s scripts, it became clear that each of us had been wrangling with the same issues in writing our plays. Things were beginning to make sense.   

Ernest Hemingway described rewriting as ‘getting the words right’. For my play, I came away from the workshop realising that I needed to do more than that.  I had to rethink the whole structure: I had to add more conflict to events from the past. I needed to focus in on the detail of the story; to go further and write the ‘aftermath’ of what I’d thought was the conclusion of the play. But that would have to wait… first I was heading straight back to Portugal to catch the end of the medical conference…

The recording
The oddest moment of the day was getting off the Tube and spotting Neil Pearson alighting from the next carriage with a newspaper in one hand and my script in the other. I’d been brought up on a diet of Channel 4 comedy during my sixth-form years in the early 90s, so to have Neil ‘Drop The Dead Donkey’ Pearson agree to play the lead in my drama debut was very exciting.  I just hoped he’d been told it wasn’t much of a comedy.

In fact, for a drama about a couple making a suicide pilgrimage to Zurich, the recording day was surprisingly upbeat.  The cast and crew were fantastic, curious to get the detail right: the medical aspects of Yvonne’s condition, the best colloquial German to use, committed to creating the most realistic sound environment. 

Subtleties of the sound
This latter aspect was the most surprising to me: before this experience, I’d imagined a recording involved actors standing round a microphone banging out horse hoof sfx with coconut shells. But for this recording, the crew created locations to record each scene: a tram interior, a hotel bedroom, an opera house. Wild tracks of real sound were recorded as needed: a squeaking wheelchair, a rattling cup and saucer, a car boot being closed.

It was a privilege to be there in the studio. Wired to earphones, I could stand in the next room and hear how it would sound on radio – so different to standing in the room where it was actually being recorded. The nuances created by slight changes in microphone position, or even which mic is used, really come through. 

There were amusing moments, too: sitting next door I was impressed that the lead couple seemed to be really getting into the passion of a hotel bedroom scene.  Watching the second take, they were indeed writhing round on a makeshift bed, but those very realistic sound effects came from juicy kisses to the back of their own hands. Neil Pearson pointed out that there were only two professions that could get you that far, that quickly; acting was one of them. 

Writer on set
Being there meant I could discuss script changes with the director, Noreen Kershaw: a line here or there that seemed apt; even a change from English to German when I realised she’d cast a multilingual set of actors.  I don’t know how usual it is for the writer to be present during the recording, but I enjoyed the flexibility of being able to adapt the script at points where it felt right, having heard the drama played out for the first time.

Movie for the wireless
‘Grey as far as you can see, look’, says Tony, the lead character, to his wife outside the run-down block of flats where she’s about to end her life.  And it was, as we stood in the spitting rain, just off an industrial estate in north-west London, getting Yvonne (the actress Julie Riley) in and out of a taxi.

John Dryden records a lot of radio drama on location. It adds a layer of authenticity and atmosphere to the piece. This scene, with its sense of mounting tension and foreboding, benefited. The scene in the back of the taxi, a monologue from Tony, as his wife has been reduced to murmurs, was recorded in one take. It sounds exactly as I’d imagined it, sitting at my desk a year before. Little did I think my play would get so far. Another amusing moment: as Neil Pearson finished his monologue, and Julie Riley could recover from 10 minutes of painful, rasping breathing, but no words, he turned to her and said (faux-luvvie style), ‘No no no, you were best!’.

The power of radio
The most powerful scene in the whole play is when Yvonne actually ends her life. Peter Czajkowski, as the doctor, had the perfect tone: a quiet, deep, sympathetic, but matter-of-fact voice, contrasting with Neil Pearson’s incredible tenderness, as the loving husband comforting his wife through her last breaths. 

Meeting with Steve Bond, the sound designer, to hear the rough cut, I was blown away by the final result: every sound was crystal-clear (the swallowing of the medicine, the eerie sound of Tony pushing an empty wheelchair). It was layered with the haunting beauty of Strauss’s Morgen contrasted against the harsh, mechanical sounds of rewinding video tape and a grating lift. Here was the power of radio in action. I was  delighted with the end result.

Andy’s learning
I’ve learned an extraordinary amount throughout the year, from structure and writing, through to the finished product. Radio is a brilliant medium for writers, and I’ve already started work on my second play, on the current political and social situation in South Africa. One day I’ll write a comedy, but not just yet…

Check out the other wining writers for The Radio Play's The Thing

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