"CRISIS IN SPAIN."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20962, 27 August 1931, Page 3

"CRISIS IN SPAIN."

BROADCAST NEWS DRAMA. | NOVEL 8.8.C. PRESENTATION. j : The British Broadcasting Corporation 1 recently arranged an unusual entertain- ; ment, entitled "Crisis in Spain." It was i thus described in a London paper by Mr. L. W. Waiters, M.P., who had attended a "private view" : "This is to be the first example, for English audiences, of what the French call rapportage, which should be the ' faithful reconstruction and recounting of an event. It has been done already in Germany with the agency of the broadcasting stations and I understand that the experiment is being watched closely by the experts of other countries, particularly in the United States. The general idea is that any event of outstanding importance can be portrayed by wireless if the dramatic elements associated with it are handled effectively, and the true atmosphere is created by actual reproduction of broadcast announcements, by certain legitimate and incidental sound effects and by suggestion. " 'Crisis in Spain' has been chosen for no other reason than that the Spanish Revolution possessed all the elements of a siirring newsdrama and is recent enough to be fresh in the memory of those who listened to the story of it as wireless news. It is not to be acted in any strict sense. There will be no impersonation of any character. Nobody will pretend to be King Alfonso or Senor Zamorra. "News, as broadcast from Spain and retold by every broadcasting station in the world, will be rebroadcast. Incidental music, such as the 'Marcha Real* and the 'Marseillaise,' will be suggested by a few bars. From each Spanish station will come other snatches of music suggestive of the different provincial centres. There will be opening sentences in Spanish of important political pronouncements, as they were handled at the time by wireless announcers—not as they were actually delivered by those personally responsible for them. "Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro —every station that took up the story and told it in its own way—will cut in to make the drama more effective; to reconstruct the wireless report of an exciting time in the history of Spain and to depict a world of wireless news receivers taking in the story of the collapse of a dynasty and the inauguration of the Republic. But the drama will be unfolded almost entirely in English. Only so far as Spanish, French and an American reporter's idiom are essential to whirl the listener through the ether and suggest scenes in the drama, will any language other than English be used. "There is to be no fake or fiction about 'Crisis in Spain.' The authors of this new item in broadcasting programmes have confined themselves strictly to the truth. No comment is being introduced and for practically every word that will be broadcast chapter and verse in actual reporting a-s at the time of the crisis can be given."