Words and Music

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Drama

Music: Classical

A journey of discovery, weaving music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

A weekly journey of discovery, weaving together a range of music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

Words and Music: Theatre

Theatre

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Theatre

Rory Kinnear and Indira Varma pull open the curtains for a celebration of acting

Poetry, prose and music to transport you to the theatre with readers Indira Varma and Rory Kinnear getting the show on the road accompanied by Kurt Weill, Purcell and Matthew Locke

We go backstage and into the experiences of performers in front of the footlights in today's programme which broadcasts on the day of the Olivier Awards. From Shakespeare’s Hamlet deciding to use a play to catch out his villainous uncle, to the playwright Michael Frayn describing the agony of a cigarette lighter failing to function on stage, actors Rory Kinnear and Indira Varma read from a range of plays and prose exploring the pleasures and pitfalls of theatrical life. You'll also hear the voice of perhaps the most legendary figure in modern British theatre: Sir Laurence Olivier, discussing the newly founded National Theatre Company in 1963. There’s a moment from Bernadine Evaristo’s novel Girl, Woman, Other, where a playwright reflects on her move from theatrical radical to member of the mainstream; and that’s followed up with a true visionary of the theatre: Kurt Weill singing a wonderfully Germanic-sounding version of Speak Low. The theatrical soundtrack also stars Henry Purcell, Ethel Merman and Frankie Howard (in a toga) and a seventeenth century wind machine.

Readings:
As You Like It - Shakespeare
Hamlet/Bernhardt  - Theresa Rebeck
Collected Columns - Michael Frayn
Actress - Anne Enright
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Everisto
Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell
The Early Diaries - Simon Gray
The Seagull - Chekhov Trans. Stoppard
Stop the Show!: A History of Insane Incidents and Absurd Accidents in the Theatre - Brad Schreiber
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Dramatic Exchanges: Letters of the National Theatre - Edited by Daniel Rosenthal
Swing Time - Zadie Smith
An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge
Wise Children - Angela Carter
Morality Play - Barry Unsworth
The Tempest - Shakespeare

Producer: Georgia Mann

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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