Storytelling and Radio

Posted by Douglas Parker Jul 5, 2008

For many years before television became the staple of family entertainment, the radio played a pivotal role as the source for news and amusement. There is a big difference between television and radio, however. On television and in many cases in theatre and even in illustrated books the author’s ideas and interpretations about a character or a situation are depicted visually and the reader or viewer simply has to accept that visual image as the ‘correct’ likeness. However, in storytelling the listener needs a lot of imagination to be able to create the images of the people and the events in his or her mind. This takes a little more work, but if the story is told well the listener can have an extremely vivid experience.

Theater of the Mind

In radio, the expression was ‘theater of the mind,’ meaning that each listener was free to build the stage and actors any way imaginable as they listened to the words and sound effects coming from the big wooden box using only one sense - hearing. There were also numerous radio programs that told continuing stories much the same way that a television series would today.

As a focusing exercise, teachers should tell their gifted students about an evening in 1939 when CBS radio played an adaptation of H.G. Well’s science fiction classic The War of the Worlds. Instead of telling a traditional story, the director and narrator Orson Welles decided to present the tale by using news flashes that sounded real. So real, in fact that many, many people were fooled by the story and panicked because they were terrified!

The power of the spoken word is real, and stories are a great way to both entertain and to make a point for gifted students.