Danger 2023

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Drama: Danger 2023

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Danger 2023 by Michael Symmons Roberts, to mark the centenary of the first radio drama.

To mark the centenary of this unique art form, poet Michael Symmons Roberts updates elements from Richard Hughes' original radio play, for a drama set in an underground data bank.

The first specially written original radio drama for this then-new medium was written by playwright and poet Richard Hughes, under the title 'A Comedy of Danger'. In order to emphasise the sound-only format he set the play in a deep Welsh coal mine, where some posh English visitors get trapped in total darkness in a flooded gallery hoping for rescue. This was broadcast in early 1924.

In February 1923, the BBC broadcast a scene from Julius Caesar. To mark the centenary of this first broadcast, poet Michael Symmons Roberts has taken elements from Hughes' first full play and updated them - the shocking plunge into complete darkness without apparent hope of escape, forcing strangers together, the distant sounds of a rising threat from approaching water that gradually rises in the mine's chamber, and the first and last lines of the original which frame this new version.

In Danger 2023, the lights go out on a party visiting a remote 'doomsday' bank deep under the desert containing a vast collection of historical and cultural data about our lives, from governments, universities and media companies across the world. Our digital world being 'archivable' in a physical location, what would be lost if it were destroyed? Is our culture, our essence, so digital now that it can be preserved and resurrected by people in the distant future ? 

The VIP visitors are a small delegation on a confidential visit to this vault to see how the codes, programmes, files and data of our cyber-age are preserved in controlled conditions in case of nuclear or ecological apocalypse. Trapped in complete darkness, with attempts to contact the outside world proving futile, there's a growing fear that these people will never get out. They are increasingly forced to confront their own deaths, to enter into what they fear will be their final conversations, their last words.

The metaphorical power of a location like a doomsday data bank - as the world attempts to avert a climate catastrophe and the risk of nuclear conflict feels more urgent than it has for decades. Psychologically and dramatically, the mounting pressure and remote isolation of the party leads them to explore and evoke their response to fear, rising paranoia, and different responses to mortality. 

Cast
Shura -                  Phia Saban
Thomas/rescuer - Tachia Newall
Belle                    -   Laurel Lefkow
Milton               -  Andonis Anthony

Directed by Susan Roberts 
A BBC North production

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