Juba Radio Play
JUBA, radio play
by Stephen Burge Johnson
CAST:
Historian – Greg Ellwand
Page in the library – Aron Tager
Charles Dickens – Douglas Campbell
Sandman Sims – Jeff Jones
Dr. Knox – Chris Wiggins
P. D. Barnum – Ken James
T. R. Nichols – John Jarvis
Pell, a minstrel - Cedric Smith
Brigs, a minstrel - Ian Dickin
Guide - Greg Spotswood
Juba’s Tap-dancing by Scott Perelman,
choreographed by Jennifer Johnson
Casting Director – Linda Grearson
Original Music by Roberto Occipinti,
performed by Rob Piltch, Brian Leonard and Hue Marsh
Script Editor – Dave Carley
Associate Producer – Colleen Woods
Sound Engineer – Drago Grandic
Sound Effects – Matt Willcock
Produced and Directed by Mladen Ovadija
Produced in Toronto for CBC Radio Arts and Entertaiment
Executive Producer – James Roy
First Broadcast on March 22 and 23, 1998
by Stephen Burge Johnson
CAST:
Historian – Greg Ellwand
Page in the library – Aron Tager
Charles Dickens – Douglas Campbell
Sandman Sims – Jeff Jones
Dr. Knox – Chris Wiggins
P. D. Barnum – Ken James
T. R. Nichols – John Jarvis
Pell, a minstrel - Cedric Smith
Brigs, a minstrel - Ian Dickin
Guide - Greg Spotswood
Juba’s Tap-dancing by Scott Perelman,
choreographed by Jennifer Johnson
Casting Director – Linda Grearson
Original Music by Roberto Occipinti,
performed by Rob Piltch, Brian Leonard and Hue Marsh
Script Editor – Dave Carley
Associate Producer – Colleen Woods
Sound Engineer – Drago Grandic
Sound Effects – Matt Willcock
Produced and Directed by Mladen Ovadija
Produced in Toronto for CBC Radio Arts and Entertaiment
Executive Producer – James Roy
First Broadcast on March 22 and 23, 1998
The Dancer on the Airwaves:
Comments on the adaptation of a stage play about Juba for radio broadcast, from an address to students given in March 1998
...The CBC was very supportive of my efforts to adapt the stage play for radio, and the resulting production. It just may be, as James Roy said in his introduction, the only play with a dancer and a choreographer in its credits. I was, and am, indebted to Mladen Ovadija for seeing me through the writing of this version, and discussing in detail the process of adapting oneself, and a story, to another medium. What interests me here is that several dramaturgical and production decisions were made in the adaptation and the production process, and I find these telling, in light of the questions the theatrical version was trying to raise.
1. It was suggested to me that in radio it is very difficult–perhaps impossible–to set a drama in/on "the radio," in the sense that a stage play can be set in "this theatre, now." Radio audiences, I was told, typically imagine a place, and as a dramatist, it was important for me to supply one for each scene– an "ambient sound" to inform them of where they are. What I did, in light of this recommendation, was to set the frame in a library, instead of in a theatre or "on the airwaves," where the Historian is looking at the documents. The documents, then, come alive in his imagination--and each document has its own time and place, a slum street, a dance house, a saloon, and a dissection room where Juba's body is being prepared as a skeleton. It was a solution to an imposed convention of radio.
It may be correct that audiences typically imagine a scene in a particular time and place, and I respect the advice of those with a long-standing expertise in the form. But if so, making this change– removing the audience/performer relationship from the here and now–did eliminate one of the essential statements of the stage play, that we were all constructing history right now, in the present moment.
2. I was told that, in general, different voices were needed for different characters; and the CBC very kindly spent far more for actors than it typically does. There was some doubling, as it turned out; but everything that could be done to disguise the doubling was done. This also was in direct opposition to the intention of the stage version, where only two actors were designated "documents," and the role-playing was fore-grounded. In the stage version, doubling and tripling drew connections among kinds of attitudes toward Juba--the character who hated the dance, the character most sexually attracted to Juba, and the character who dissected him, were all played by the same actor, generating some interesting, and provocative connections. I understand absolutely that the use of the same voice for different characters could be quite confusing on radio, without the visual signals to help the listener. But by not being able to use it, there was a change in interpretation.
3. If we are to be accurate about the characters, then Dickens, Barnum, most of these characters, were perhaps 30 when they saw Juba, who was anywhere from 12 to 22. I always imagined the documents as being younger than the Historian--a figure who has been at the research for a while, trying to see Juba through these young minds, in too much of a hurry to try to get past their youthful opinions and ideals to something even approaching an accurate description.
The radio play, by contrast, was cast with seasoned older actors, the part of the Historian the youngest actor (but one). By no means do I call this wrong; the cast was excellent. I simply find the resulting change in interpretation interesting. In my original conception, the documents are "written by" young men, and are therefore young, creating one kind of relationship with the Historian. But to the radio producers, "documents" are by definition "old"--so they were (in a sense) cast by the age of the paper they were written on, not the figure that wrote on it. The relationship they had with the Historian was more condescending, dismissive–they considered him too young to get the point. I can't fault that as an interpretation, not at all. It just surprised me, as playwrights are so often surprised by the unintended meaning generated by the individual production.
4. Finally, when it came to the dance itself, those involved in the production wanted a young black male dancer to supply the sounds of the tap–to ‘play’ Juba, who does not otherwise speak. The dancer and actress who had played Juba on stage was hired as the choreographer, and worked with this dancer to create the appropriate sounds. He was superb, and I could understand, in the context of production, why this decision was made. He provided a physical presence upon which other actors–who after all, in radio, tend to come in for a day’s recording with minimal rehearsal–could focus the interpretation of their own lines. He made sounds that certainly could not be duplicated otherwise, because of their improvisational character, and because of the ambient sounds created by him–ambient, and therefore creating the sense of specific time and place that was the goal. It was suggested to me that his individuality, his presence would be transmitted to the listener over the airwaves. I cannot say this is wrong; perhaps that communication happened.
This casting fascinated me, however, because it was a decision that seemed wholly invisible to the listener. It was also, once again, at odds with the more disruptive messages inherent in the stage production. Juba never appeared on stage–a body that attempted to imitate the words describing Juba appeared–though, of course, an audience will make of that figure what they will. The radio production took pains to create a physical presence for Juba.
But could something similar to the stage productions’ process of ‘inventing’ Juba have been achieved on radio? If the sound of Juba had not been made by someone young, or black, or male, there would have been no difference in the way the audience heard the sounds. Radio need not use a single body--many dancers might have been used, each with a different style, expressing the contradictory descriptions of his dance (See Channelling Juba’s Dance). It needn’t use a body at all, in fact--since the only part of the dance that is communicated over the radio is percussive, the production might have used a variety of percussion instruments to represent Juba’s dance.
I outline these differences not to choose my preference, but to emphasize that every decision made in production--ideological, or practical--alters interpretation, sometimes the smallest change the most radically. It was a very different 'understanding' (or is the word 'mis-interpretation') on radio than on stage.
Stephen Johnson
Comments on the adaptation of a stage play about Juba for radio broadcast, from an address to students given in March 1998
...The CBC was very supportive of my efforts to adapt the stage play for radio, and the resulting production. It just may be, as James Roy said in his introduction, the only play with a dancer and a choreographer in its credits. I was, and am, indebted to Mladen Ovadija for seeing me through the writing of this version, and discussing in detail the process of adapting oneself, and a story, to another medium. What interests me here is that several dramaturgical and production decisions were made in the adaptation and the production process, and I find these telling, in light of the questions the theatrical version was trying to raise.
1. It was suggested to me that in radio it is very difficult–perhaps impossible–to set a drama in/on "the radio," in the sense that a stage play can be set in "this theatre, now." Radio audiences, I was told, typically imagine a place, and as a dramatist, it was important for me to supply one for each scene– an "ambient sound" to inform them of where they are. What I did, in light of this recommendation, was to set the frame in a library, instead of in a theatre or "on the airwaves," where the Historian is looking at the documents. The documents, then, come alive in his imagination--and each document has its own time and place, a slum street, a dance house, a saloon, and a dissection room where Juba's body is being prepared as a skeleton. It was a solution to an imposed convention of radio.
It may be correct that audiences typically imagine a scene in a particular time and place, and I respect the advice of those with a long-standing expertise in the form. But if so, making this change– removing the audience/performer relationship from the here and now–did eliminate one of the essential statements of the stage play, that we were all constructing history right now, in the present moment.
2. I was told that, in general, different voices were needed for different characters; and the CBC very kindly spent far more for actors than it typically does. There was some doubling, as it turned out; but everything that could be done to disguise the doubling was done. This also was in direct opposition to the intention of the stage version, where only two actors were designated "documents," and the role-playing was fore-grounded. In the stage version, doubling and tripling drew connections among kinds of attitudes toward Juba--the character who hated the dance, the character most sexually attracted to Juba, and the character who dissected him, were all played by the same actor, generating some interesting, and provocative connections. I understand absolutely that the use of the same voice for different characters could be quite confusing on radio, without the visual signals to help the listener. But by not being able to use it, there was a change in interpretation.
3. If we are to be accurate about the characters, then Dickens, Barnum, most of these characters, were perhaps 30 when they saw Juba, who was anywhere from 12 to 22. I always imagined the documents as being younger than the Historian--a figure who has been at the research for a while, trying to see Juba through these young minds, in too much of a hurry to try to get past their youthful opinions and ideals to something even approaching an accurate description.
The radio play, by contrast, was cast with seasoned older actors, the part of the Historian the youngest actor (but one). By no means do I call this wrong; the cast was excellent. I simply find the resulting change in interpretation interesting. In my original conception, the documents are "written by" young men, and are therefore young, creating one kind of relationship with the Historian. But to the radio producers, "documents" are by definition "old"--so they were (in a sense) cast by the age of the paper they were written on, not the figure that wrote on it. The relationship they had with the Historian was more condescending, dismissive–they considered him too young to get the point. I can't fault that as an interpretation, not at all. It just surprised me, as playwrights are so often surprised by the unintended meaning generated by the individual production.
4. Finally, when it came to the dance itself, those involved in the production wanted a young black male dancer to supply the sounds of the tap–to ‘play’ Juba, who does not otherwise speak. The dancer and actress who had played Juba on stage was hired as the choreographer, and worked with this dancer to create the appropriate sounds. He was superb, and I could understand, in the context of production, why this decision was made. He provided a physical presence upon which other actors–who after all, in radio, tend to come in for a day’s recording with minimal rehearsal–could focus the interpretation of their own lines. He made sounds that certainly could not be duplicated otherwise, because of their improvisational character, and because of the ambient sounds created by him–ambient, and therefore creating the sense of specific time and place that was the goal. It was suggested to me that his individuality, his presence would be transmitted to the listener over the airwaves. I cannot say this is wrong; perhaps that communication happened.
This casting fascinated me, however, because it was a decision that seemed wholly invisible to the listener. It was also, once again, at odds with the more disruptive messages inherent in the stage production. Juba never appeared on stage–a body that attempted to imitate the words describing Juba appeared–though, of course, an audience will make of that figure what they will. The radio production took pains to create a physical presence for Juba.
But could something similar to the stage productions’ process of ‘inventing’ Juba have been achieved on radio? If the sound of Juba had not been made by someone young, or black, or male, there would have been no difference in the way the audience heard the sounds. Radio need not use a single body--many dancers might have been used, each with a different style, expressing the contradictory descriptions of his dance (See Channelling Juba’s Dance). It needn’t use a body at all, in fact--since the only part of the dance that is communicated over the radio is percussive, the production might have used a variety of percussion instruments to represent Juba’s dance.
I outline these differences not to choose my preference, but to emphasize that every decision made in production--ideological, or practical--alters interpretation, sometimes the smallest change the most radically. It was a very different 'understanding' (or is the word 'mis-interpretation') on radio than on stage.
Stephen Johnson