This production of the short play Artist Descending a Staircase, by Tom Stoppard, originally written for broadcast on the radio, is an example of translating a play from its original medium into the tradition of Western theatre. In many instances, the play reflects its original status as a radio drama through, for example, jokes that rely on misleading sound effects and highly descriptive dialogue. Because the message of a play is often particularly relevant to its original intended audience and cultural context, to convey to an audience accustomed to the theatre tradition the meaning of a play written for a different medium, such as radio, it is necessary to blend the styles of radio and theatre into a production that reflects the significant elements of each.
Before discussing radio and theatre, however, it is important to spend a brief space discussing Tom Stoppard as an author. His fascination with language and love of asking and exploring questions that he does not necessarily answer are reflected in Artist Descending a Staircase. Understanding the way in which Stoppard writes and themes that appear consistently in his plays is extremely helpful in interpreting Artist Descending a Staircase.
With regards to the medium of radio, the engagement of the audience, the use of sound and sound effects, and the exploitation of reality are particularly significant. Because radio is an aural medium, the audience is required to create their own visualizations of the characters, settings, and events of the play based solely on the information offered by the sounds, voices, and sound effects of the production. Furthermore, because of the lack of concrete visual information, radio dramatists are more able to toy with concepts of reality, introducing impossible physical situations or playing with the ambiguous existence of a silent character.
In the medium of theatre, it is the engagement of the audience and the style of production that are particularly important. In live theatre the audience and the performance exist in a dynamic relationship; the response of the audience affects the performance as much as the performance affects the audience response. The director engages the audience through the style of the production, communicating the bigger ideas of the production, the information that is not contained merely in the dialogue. The chosen style affects every decision, and must be consistent and appropriate to the play to be effective.
The field of semiotics is also important to this discussion, as it reveals that humans interpret signs such as words or images based on a shared cultural context and prior personal experiences. It is important for directors to understand that every image, sound, and word that happens on stage contains a great deal of meaning for the members of the audience. The signs used in a production, from the dialogue to the color of the lights, are used to convey the message of the play to the viewers.
This production of Artist Descending a Staircase is intended to fuse elements of the radio and theatre mediums into a whole that, while a performed live onstage, explore the plays roots as a radio play. To this end, the sound effects of the play are done largely live and made a point of great focus. Other elements of the production are neutral or suggested, rather than fully and elaborately constructed, allowing the audience more imaginative freedom than is usual in theatre. Because of this blending of radio and theatre, it is possible to stage Artist Descending a Staircase in a live theatre setting without completely removing it from its context as a radio play and thereby losing original intent of the playwright.