Music and acoustics in radio dramas, namely in the radio adaptations of Tadeusz Różewicz’s plays

Abstract

The object of my interest is music co-creating the so-called “acoustic kitchen” in radio drama adaptations of Tadeusz Różewicz’s works. There is no doubt that both in older versions of radio dramas, including Świadkowie albo nasza mała stabilizacja from the 60’s, as well as in the latest ones (eg Pułapka from 2016), music is an important component of the setting; it creates the scenery and atmosphere, illustrates the internal states of the characters, and portrays their emotions and interrelationships. It also plays a traditional delimitational role, separating individual acts and scenes, dismembering the text and establishing smooth transitions between its parts. For the researcher of the radio versions of plays intended for the theater stage, as in the case of Różewicz, it is extremely important to determine the location of musical elements in the (radio) drama, to look at the principles of selection of these motifs and the way they are joined together, as well as to reflect on their origin; in other words, to determine to what extent the musical choices result from the will of the author of a play, and how much they are derived from the invention of the radio drama’s producers. In my interpretation, I follow the musical and acoustic suggestions included in the stage directions and the way they are used by the authors of the dramas, such as: Akt przerywany, Białe małżeństwo, Kartoteka, Kartoteka rozproszona, Odejście Głodomora, Pogrzeb po polsku, Pułapka, Stara kobieta wysiaduje, Świadkowie albo nasza mała stabilizacja, Wyszedł z domu. I will address the question of how the notes given by the author were taken into account in the radio versions of his plays and how the producers of the adaptation made the decision themselves to introduce muical and acoustic elements not marked by the author in the stage directions.