News & Events
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Seán Street's 'Unusual' Radio Programme 'Then-Now' to be aired on Radio 4 |
"Probably one of the most unusual radio programmes I’ve ever been involved with"so says Seán Street of 'Then – Now', a half-hour feature to be aired by Radio 4 at 8:30pm on 9th January 2006.
Producer Andy Cartwright of Soundscape Productions approached Seán some months ago, to see if he’d be interested in working on a programme which played with the idea of time in a new and innovative way.
The concept was to make a "radio poem" focusing on a single chosen minute in a particular day. An invitation was sent out to sound recordists from all over the UK, to record this single minute wherever they were, and whatever they were doing.
"The minute we chose was 6.00pm to 6.01pm on the 9th of November" said Seán. "It's an arbitrary date and time, which is part of the interest. We could have chosen a "special" day, but I like the idea of a day chosen at random, like those old photos we see of street scenes from the 1890s, or whenever, which give us such a poignant glimpse of the "ordinary" in another age. Of course there’s no such thing as an "ordinary" day – every day is someone's birthday, death-day, anniversary or whatever."
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"It's the first time I've made a programme in which I wasn’t in control of the originating content. Quite scary, but really exciting"- Andy Cartwright |
And days become significant. "Think of September 11th – now associated with a single catastrophic event – but what was it before that? As it happened, our date turned out to be the day Blair lost the Commons vote on the new Terrorism law – just about an hour before our recordists pressed the button. Who knows what chain of events were set in motion in that minute?"
Over a hundred versions of the same minute were received from all over Britain, from students, freelancers and staff producers, in addition to members of the public. The next task for Seán and Andy was to make connections between these recordings. As Andy says "It's the first time I've made a programme in which I wasn’t in control of the originating content. Quite scary, but really exciting."
Seán agrees. Once Andy put all the recordings into a structure, I then wrote a poetic narrative linking the material – but actually the whole thing – sound and my words – becomes one big radio poem, using the medium in a way it's never been used before."
A stanza from the poem sums it up:
"We can stretch Time. Listen –
the minute multiplies,
blends to a music, becomes now again.
Time stretched beyond Place,
Released from the cage of Place
To become at once everywhere,
Elastic. And then is now."
The date symbolism has been carried through the whole production process. "The final mix was scheduled for 9 December – one month after our "measured minute" and one month before transmission. And as I say in my introduction, who knows what the circumstance or context of the radio audience's listing experience will be? Who knows what 9/1/06 will bring? We live our lives, minute by minute."
Reviews for Then- Now
"An extraordinary piece of work, the first genuinely innovative experiment in radio I’ve heard for years… With Street’s brilliant connecting narrative, it was one of the most riveting and magical half-hours of broadcasting I can recall. I didn’t want it to end." Ruth Cowen, Sunday Express
" Sean Street’s poetry is beautiful… the whole thing is quite wonderful." Hilary Oliver, BBC Radio 2 , Parkinson’s Sunday Supplement
"Weird, genuinely wonderful, simply beautiful.” Jane Anderson, Radio Times
"Takes your ears beyond stereo…radio which slips through time and place quite magically." Gillian Reynolds, Daily Telegraph
"I’ve never heard anything quite like it – and it’s wonderful." Gerry Anderson, Pick of the Week, BBC Radio 4.
