3rd Audiotheque newsletter

And here's the latest newsletter:

THE AUDIOTHEQUE
NEWSLETTER 13 June 2007

Welcome to the 3rd Audiotheque newsletter. If you haven’t received the other newsletters, you can read them at: http://audiodrama.blogspot.com/. As usual, you can email me at audiotheque@bbc.co.uk.

It's a particularly Europhile newsletter this month, with material from France and Germany, but don't worry if you're semi-bilingual because our French friends are helpfully speaking in English, whilst our German cousins have provided translations.

ARTE RADIO FILM: http://blogs.arte.tv/Arteradio
The Audiotheque loves convergence, so the first piece of content in this newsletter devoted to short-form audio is, er, a short film. Thrill to the behind-the-scenes footage of Arte Radio in action, gasp at their success in attracting hip Parisian types to the site and marvel at their description of pre-Arte audio drama as a tired, ridiculous medium for the over-60s. Directed by me and edited by mini-genius Des Burkinshaw...

RESORT: http://www.myspace.com/hsdlondon
As I've clearly diverted wildly from the avowed aims of this newsletter, i.e. promoting creative audio (http://audiodrama.blogspot.com/2007/04/1st-newsletter.html), I'll blunder on by including a 12 minute audio drama from the mini-genii at HSD. "Resort" is their riposte to Radio 4's "From Fact to Fiction" series (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/fromfacttofiction/), in which an audio drama based on the "big" story of the week is turned around in a week, and it's well worth comparing and contrasting the different approaches. As usual the sound production is top notch and there's some great acting. All recorded in the director's house apparently, and didn't cost a penny to make (apart from cake for the actors). Sound design by James Robinson, directed by Sasha Yevtushenko.

WURFSENDUNG: http://www.dradio.de/wurf/index.php/en/Home/Wurfpaket/id/1
(Apologies to those who've already seen this information on the blog).
And at last I can put up a link to Deutschlandradio Kultur's Wurfsendung page, because they've posted 3 of their "pakets" with English translations. So I have at least got some short-form creative audio to share this month. The Wurfsendung (which I'm told translates, poorly, as "postcards") are the original inspiration for the whole Audiotheque project: ultra-short mini-dramas packaged in the same way as a commercial break and dropped randomly throughout Deutschlandradio Kultur's schedule. Brilliantly produced, witty and surprising.

FEEDBACK
As ever, keep sending me your stuff, or links to other people's interesting stuff, and feel free to get in touch with comments, news, opinion, whatever.

A.O.B.
Many thanks to Toby Lichtig for plugging us in his Guardian blog: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/04/the_podcasts_the_thing_to_revi.html And yeah, I know it's iRiver. But what can you do, eh? And as we're back onto convergence, here's what the iRiver can do: http://85.159.184.112/for/.

I promised details of the forthcoming Audiotheque competition this month, but I lied. It'll be in next month's newsletter. Honest.

Thanks for reading/listening/watching.

Conor