Middlebury Radio Theater

This is the first installment of a five-part series on the production of a single Mr|Tots show from start to finished.  Parts two through five (editing, music, casting, performance) will be posted over the next two-plus months.

While most of you have probably heard a Mr|Tots production through a live broadcast or a podcast, many might be unaware of the amount of work that goes into each episode of our show.  Although we originally chose our projects not one week before they were performed, we now plan sometimes months in advance in order to accommodate our growing cast and take advantage of our increasingly sophisticated resources.  The summer months are a valuable time for the Mr|Tots crew, since they offer the chance to prepare for the next batch of shows without the pressure of the Middlebury academic schedule.  For the first part of The Making of a Mr|Tots Broadcast, we’ll be examining the process of conceiving of and writing an episode of The Middlebury Radio Theater of Thrills and Suspense.  The episode in question: our upcoming production of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.  As this is an adaptation of a preexisting work, there are differences from the process used for an original piece, but the principles are the same.

There are two things to consider when adapting a film, novel, or television program for radio.  The first is whether or not the original work is dramatically satisfying.  The second is whether or not it is well-suited for radio.  The first question is easy to answer, while the second is not.  The original impetus for choosing The Big Sleep to adapted was its status as a classic of both literature and cinema, but there were originally doubts as to its suitability for radio.  The plot is notoriously complex, and the process of adaptation requires both a fidelity to the original text and the ability to separate what is necessary from what is not.  But in many way The Big Sleep is uniquely well-suited for a radio adaptation.  First and foremost, it is a piece that relies on character and plot rather than visual spectacle.  Second, it is in all previous forms, including Chandler’s novel and William Faulkner’s screenplay, an exceedingly well-written piece of work, oozing wit and charm while at the same time possessing a classical gravitas.  Third, and perhaps most importantly, it is the sort of piece that Mr|Tots members can enjoy performing.  This may be the most important element of all, since Mr|Tots’s best works in the past have been those which we’ve truly enjoyed producing.  For these reasons, The Big Sleep passes the radio-appropriate test.

Once we’ve determined what piece we actually want to produce, someone must begin the long, occasionally painful task of actually writing the adaptation.  Most Mr|Tots adaptations tend to stay fairly close to the original text, so it is handy to have close at hand a copy of the work itself.  I chose to work from Faulkner’s screenplay instead of Chandler’s novel, partially because the original novel contained material that we would be unable to broadcast, but mainly because the tempo and structure of the film lent itself to radio adaption more easily than that of the book.  I was fortunate to find a PDF of the screenplay online.  (There have been, and continue to be, instances such as Double Indemnity, where no screenplay is readily available, and the adaptation must be slowly churned out with a copy of the film at hand for frequent viewings.)  With that, I set to work.

With The Big Sleep in particular, the first and most important creative decision to be made was whether or not to include narration.  It is not unusual in radio to do so, since it is easy to use spoken description in the place of the visual elements available to other mediums.  For some past productions, including originals such as The Secret of Shadow Valley and adaptations such as The Man Who Wasn’t There, the technique has been successful, but it seemed somehow inappropriate for The Big Sleep.  The rationalization I ultimately used was that even though Marlowe is the archetypal detective, to fall back on a technique like voice over seemed almost lazy for his story.  The decision made, I proceeded.

When creating an original piece, you have the opportunity to write for particular actors.  When writing the Nazi Hunters serials, I knew ahead of time that Jack Cuneo and Bobby Joe Smith would be playing the leads, and could consequently write to their strengths.  With an adaptation, it’s a bit tougher, and as a result, the characters often tend to be a bit more fleshed out in and of themselves.  You leave less to chance and generally force actors to conform to the writing, rather than the opposite.  The Big Sleep is no exception, but this is often an advantage, since it allows for the creation of more self-consistent characters.  In short, I am writing Marlowe as Marlowe, and as no one else.

Again, The Big Sleep is legendary for its convoluted plot, and it was my intention to leave it as intact as possible.  However, in the course of converting the story into an hour-plus radio drama, some details had to be lost.  Certain characters were dropped or combined with one another as work progressed, and a few scenes were removed to keep the running time appropriately brisk.  But the key when making the decision about what to keep and what to lose is determining what the ultimate effect on the end product would be.  When adapting Casablanca, you can’t lose the airport speech, but you can lose minor background characters and subplots.  Ultimately, it’s the piece as a whole that matters, which is why even though it sometimes hurts to lose minor details, it does often have to be done.

And this is the second-most important thing to consider when adapting a radio drama: ultimately, it is the work itself, not the work in comparison to that from which it was adapted, that is important.  You can’t expect a listener to have seen the film or read the book.  You can only try to offer them the best radio drama experience they can find.

What’s the most important thing to consider when adapting a radio drama?  Simply that the actors have fun performing and that the fans have fun listening.  You can ask for no more.

The Big Sleep will be broadcast during Mr|Tots Season Four, which begins in September 2008.