News | Thursday, 30th March 2023
Poetry Professor takes part in the BBC centenary celebrations
Professor Michael Symmons Roberts writes new drama, documentary, and poem for BBC Radio
University poet, Professor Michael Symmons Roberts has been commissioned to write a new drama, documentary, and poem as part of the celebrations for the centenary year of the BBC.
Symmons Roberts, Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, was commissioned to write Danger 2023, an audio drama based on the first written original radio drama A Comedy of Danger by playwright and poet Richard Hughes, which was broadcast by the BBC 100 years ago.
Danger 2023, a one-hour drama which was recently broadcast on BBC Radio 4, sees a group of VIP visitors on a confidential visit to a remote doomsday data bank under the desert containing a vast collection of historical and cultural data about their lives. The group becomes trapped underground in complete darkness, with failed attempts to contact the outside world.
Paying homage to Hughes’s play, Prof Symmons Roberts has taken elements from the original including the setting, the encroaching danger the characters encounter, and the first and last lines, and adapted it into a new version relevant to a modern audience.
BBC Radio has always been a big part of my life as a writer, so it was a privilege to be part of the schedule to mark its centenary in drama and documentary.
In Danger 2023, the drama has been brought up to date with references to modern technology that would not have been around in the original 100 years ago, including the digital archive the group are visiting, and how they leave their mobile phones with security for the visit meaning they cannot communicate with the outside world once trapped.
Speaking about his commissions for the BBC centenary, Prof Symmons Roberts said: “BBC Radio has always been a big part of my life as a writer, so it was a privilege to be part of the schedule to mark its centenary in drama and documentary. As a listener and a contributor, I hope the BBC will survive and flourish in its second century.”
As part of the BBC centenary celebrations, Prof Symmons Roberts was also commissioned to write and present Dramatic Beats, an hour-long documentary about the history and importance of radio drama as an art form, and which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Archive on 4.
Featuring interviews and archival clips, the documentary highlights radio dramas from across the century that reflect the many features of the genre that help distinguish it from other narrative forms.
Speaking in the documentary about how BBC Radio drama is still one of the most accessible dramatic forms, attracting large audiences 100 years on from when the first radio drama was broadcast, Prof Symmons Roberts said: “BBC Radio drama reaches around one million listeners a day. You’d have to sell out the Olivier Theatre 870 times over to match that audience. As long as people want to tell stories in this way, and want to listen to them, then this most intimate and shapeshifting dramatic form is worth fighting for.”
As long as people want to tell stories in this way, and want to listen to them, then this most intimate and shapeshifting dramatic form is worth fighting for.
Prof Symmons Roberts was also one of several poets commissioned by BBC Radio 3 programme The Verb to write a new poem Last Listener at the Mid-Atlantic Frost-Fair to mark 100 years of the BBC.
A reading of his new poem was recently broadcast on The Verb (from 40:10) for their ‘Something Old, Something New’ series, and he will also appear again on the show later in March to discuss the poem and his work in more depth.
Prof Symmons Roberts has published eight collections of poetry, has previously won the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and has received major awards from the Arts Council and the Society of Authors.
