The "New" Radio Drama: Recent Radiophonic Experiments in Germany

The "New" Radio Drama: Recent Radiophonic Experiments in Germany RENATE USMIANI • THE TERM NEUES HORSPIEL, "the new radio play," was coined by Klaus Schoning1 in 1967, and is broadly defined by him as "an opening up of all possible avenues of radio as a medium."2 Viewed historically, it represents a total and often violent reaction against the "Golden Age" of the 50s, when writers such as Eich, Weyrauch and Bachmann created for the radio audience an "inner stage" of the imagination, often considered the last stronghold of poetic expression in the traditional sense. The revolutionary quality of the "new" radio play is underlined by the adoption of a new technology: stereophonic, rather than monaural, sound, and the preference of the cut over the traditional fade in connecting scenes. Plot structure gives way to elaborate collage techniques. Composition is no longer strictly literary: "I exchange my desk for a seat at the control board of the sound engineer," says Paul Portner, one of the artists of the new school, "my new syntax is the cut, my texts are recorded via microphones, tape recorders, sound steering and filters, many elements are put together to form the collage which makes up the final play ... chance also plays a part....,,3 The concept of individual authorship becomes increasingly ambiguous as the part played by the technical team in the studio takes on a major importance. Medium-oriented and open to experimentation, the new genre purports to replace an art form which had attained its maximum potential in literary form as well as production technique in the 50s; a genre whose "virtuosity and refinement in the creation of illusion and inner experience could hardly be surpassed," as Schoning put it.4 Finding no room for further development, the new generation had no alternative but to change direction altogether. The proponents of the Neue Horspiei also claim that the traditional type of play had become ideologically obsolete, so that radically new forms should be 217 218 RENATE USMIANI evolved to reeducate an overly complacent audience along the lines of personal involvement and social awareness. This attitude is reflected in Friedrich Knilli's introduction to a series of experimental plays in the 1969 program notes of the NDRs: "This (earlier) type of programming was determined by the clerical anti-communism of the Adenauer era - an ideology which was already anachronistic in 1959, but which would be sheer nonsense in 1969, the year of social democracy." The revolutionary, "socially relevant" genre which has emerged is obviously not without historical antecedents. Opinions voiced by the current crop of avant-gardists hark back suspiciously to the strident theories of the German dadaism of the 20s, a fact they make no attempt to conceal. Another strong influence upon the movement is Brecht. Beyond his famous Speech on the Function of Radio (1932), Brecht's insistence on alienation and his demand for a socially meaningful approach have become central points of reference for the Neues Horspiel, which is thus only falling in with a movement which occurred on the stage several decades earlier. On the contemporary scene, Marshall McLuhan and William Burroughs function as the patron saints of the new movement, and expansion of consciousness is its battlecry. On the literary side, there are definite parallels to the roman nouveau and to concrete poetry. In attempting a more theoretical definition of the Neues Horspiel, the etymological approach suggests itself. The word Horspiel itself is fraught with ambiguity. While authors of the traditional radio play interpreted the term Spiel as (stage) play, thus indicating the genre's close affinity to regular theatre, the new wave of writers tend to emphasize the second meaning of Spiel, i.e., play in the sense of playful activity. The new genre is thus looked upon as playing with acoustical elements. This evolution in the interpretation of the term Spiel was outlined by Helmut Heissenbiittel in his address to the International Radio Drama Congress of 1968: "Play no longer means just role play within a constellation of parts and action. Play has come to mean more and more the free manipulation of linguistic components, with rudiments of parts, fragments of action, choreographic and musical elements.,,6 The...