Andrew McCaldon’s Benny & Hitch— about the explosive relationship between legendary director Alfred Hitchcock and his frequent collaborator, composer Bernard Herrmann — has been named winner of the 2024 Imison Award for the best original script by a writer new to radio.
Shôn Dale-Jones took home the 2024 Tinniswood Award for best original audio drama script. His play Cracking is a dark comedy about love, hatred and internet trolls.
The Imison and Tinniswood Awards are presented each year as part of the BBC Audio Drama Awards and are administered by the Society of Authors and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. The BBC Audio Drama Awards were held on 24 March 2024 in the BBC Radio Theatre.
The awards are sponsored by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society and the Imison Award is also sponsored by the Peggy Ramsay Foundation.
The announcement coincides with the release of the final episode of Adventures in Radio, the Society of Authors’ podcast series all about audio drama, hosted by Barney Norris, chair of the SoA’s Scriptwriters Group. The episode, featuring an interview with award-winning writer for radio Rhiannon Tise, will be released on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon and other streaming services at midnight on 24 March.
The Imison Award 2024
Winner: Benny & Hitch by Andrew McCaldon
Produced by Neil Varley and Tracey Neale, BBC Audio Drama Wales, BBC Radio 3 | Listen now
The award was judged by members of the Society of Authors’ Scriptwriters Group: Ian Billings, Ben Carpenter, Imogen Church, Trish Cooke, Sean Grundy, Barney Norris, Robin Mukherjee and Rhiannon Tise.
The judges said: ‘This is glorious! The descriptions of music were incredibly evocative, so perfectly expressed. We loved the way it played with form, time and space, jumping from the reading of a script to action and back with such fluidity. It is entertaining and the use of music was masterful. It is inventive, playing with the medium and making excellent use of sound. It has genuine warmth, and manages to tell a human story while exploring profound questions of creativity, artistic integrity and friendship’.
Synopsis
The extraordinary and explosive relationship between director Alfred Hitchcock and the film composer Bernard Herrmann. Recorded live at Alexandra Palace with the BBC Concert Orchestra playing Herrmann’s scores from the partnership’s iconic films – Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho.
About Andrew McCaldon
Andrew McCaldon is a writer whose work has won three BAFTAs. His plays include Another Star to Steer By; I Am Trumpet; Gnomus and Hello You, Try Me.
Highly commended: In Moderation by Katie Bonna
Produced by Sally Avens, BBC, BBC Radio 4| Listen now
The other shortlisted play for the Imison Award was Happy Hour by Liv Fowler (further information here).
The Tinniswood Award 2024
Winner: Cracking by Shôn Dale-Jones
Directed by John Norton, BBC Audio Drama Wales, BBC Radio 4 | Listen now
The judges said: ‘This is a superbly told, darkly comic tale, that plays inventively into the rich potential of the audio drama form. A timely, thought-provoking and highly enjoyable piece, it presents a strikingly different narrative that artfully explores themes of love in the face of hatred, perfectly executed for radio.’
Synopsis
Shôn’s 83-year-old mother is waiting for some test results from the hospital, so he goes back home to the Isle of Anglesey to visit her. In a moment of joking around, he cracks an egg on his mother’s head. All hell is let loose. Internet trolls appear in real life demanding that he stops abusing his mother and gets off the island. Cracking is a dark comedy about how quickly reality can slip into fiction and how fiction can become more true in our minds. It is about the fear of losing our parents and our collective outrage against things that do happen and things that don’t happen.
Taking real life events as inspiration, Cracking weaves fiction and reality together into a seamless whole and laughs at the dangers of not knowing you don’t know the truth.
About Shôn Dale-Jones
Shôn Dale-Jones comes from the Isle of Anglesey, where he spent his entire childhood. He studied Drama at the University of East Anglia before training at Jacques Lecoq’s International Theatre School in Paris. He has been making theatre and radio for almost thirty years. His work has been translated into 7 languages and played on 6 continents. He’s made 29 live shows. Cracking is his sixth play for radio.
The other shortlisted plays for the Tinniswood Award were Scooters, Shooters and Shottas by John R. Gordon, About a Dog by Huw Brentnall and Ghosted by Lindsay Sharman (further information here).
The Tinniswood Award 2024 judges were Polly Thomas and Hannah Khalil.
