{"id":192,"date":"2011-04-12T12:07:36","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T12:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=192"},"modified":"2011-04-12T12:07:36","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T12:07:36","slug":"jane-purcell-bbc-radio-4-play-commission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Jane Purcell: BBC Radio 4 play commission"},"content":{"rendered":"

The way that BBC Radio 4 works is that you send in an idea, jumping through about 356 hoops while you do so.\u00a0 Then you wait and wait and at some point you might hear that your idea has gotten through the first round and you now have to develop it into a two page synopsis.\u00a0 \u00a0You do so and then submit it, and wait.\u00a0 And wait and wait.\u00a0 \u00a0Then two things might happen.\u00a0 Either you hear your play has been rejected for not being \u2018distinctive enough\u2019 or \u2018aurally interesting enough\u2019 (one day somebody is going to do the audio version of Deep Throat \u2013 I\u2019ll give them \u2018aurally interesting\u2019) \u00a0Or you might get a commission.\u00a0 Very occasionally the third thing happens.\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 Your producer occasionally emails to apologise and explain that the commissioning editor has gone somewhere else or relocated or died and somebody else is having to make a decision.\u00a0 By this point you\u2019ve forgotten the title of your play and that you even submitted it in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/a>So when my producer contacted me to say a play I\u2019d submitted eighteen months ago had been commissioned, my first response was, \u2018What play?\u2019\u00a0 \u00a0I had to go away and look at my notes.\u00a0\u00a0 But it has been commissioned \u2013 it\u2019s on next year and I have to get a draft in by September 5th<\/sup>.\u00a0 It\u2019s about a disastrous school trip in the seventies featuring my old PE teacher who was always telling us he had been in the SAS but held a compass the wrong way up and got us lost.\u00a0 It\u2019s possibly libellous but I\u2019ll worry about that later.\u00a0 And it\u2019s got rude words in it which means a fight with the BBC Legal department.\u00a0 But hey \u2013 it\u2019s a commission!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The way that BBC Radio 4 works is that you send in an idea, jumping through about 356 hoops while you do so.\u00a0 Then you wait and wait and at some point you might hear that your idea has gotten … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,63],"tags":[46,17],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plays","category-radio","tag-bbc-radio-4","tag-script"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}