One-night scratch writing, given a lasting life in audio.
The Scene takes writing that would otherwise disappear after a single scratch-night outing and records it as a small audio play that stays online. Its mini-series 'The Scene duz Lambeth Fringe' puts conversations with festival artists about their process next to a recorded slice of each show.
PRESS PLAY
The Scene is a home for writing that might otherwise last exactly one night. Its pod plays start as scratch pieces tried out at one-night-only scratch nights. They are then recorded as small audio plays and kept online, where the show jokes they can live happily forever. The plays are grouped into seasons, and the show is open about the work behind them. One intro apologises for how long a season's final play took to arrive, then says that funding cuts have pushed back production of new pod plays and forced a cheaper way of working. That play, Darren Ross's 'La Dames Aux Camélias', shows the comic side at full tilt. A gun-wielding vicar demands money to fix the church roof, and the captive swings from refusing to pay a penny to offering millions within a breath. Farce is only part of it. A mini-series, 'The Scene duz Lambeth Fringe', is made with the Lambeth Fringe Festival, which runs across the borough of Lambeth, and the intros insist on spelling out that 'duz'. Each instalment follows the same pattern: a conversation with the company or performer about the show and how it was built, then a recorded extract. The mix covers stand-up, spoken word, poetry and straight plays. One company talks about unearthing witch-trial stories that history pushed aside. They tell them with humour but keep in view that women really were prosecuted for absurd things, and they name female friendship as the heart of the piece. Another performer stages a tap show among a washing machine and drying racks, using the laundry to change costumes and throw shadows. A split-bill stand-up set turns chronic illness and a long on-off situationship into material. Some extracts go much darker. In one, two executioners talk shop about a hanging that dragged on and a man they killed by mistake. Another piece works through the archaeology of preserved bog bodies, including a woman whose neck still bears the likely mark of strangulation. Throughout, the framing voice is warm, chatty and openly on the side of fringe artists, urging listeners to follow the companies and buy tickets. Writers hear from the show directly as well. It invites script submissions for future seasons and offers the chance of seeing a piece made into a pod play. In short, it lets listeners hear work that would otherwise stay in one room for one night.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys new, rough-edged writing for the stage, both comic and dark, and likes hearing artists explain how a piece was made. Also suits writers looking for somewhere to send scratch material.
What sets it apart: Instead of commissioning polished drama, it records pieces first tried at one-night scratch performances as audio plays and takes script submissions from writers. Its Lambeth Fringe mini-series adds a festival-preview layer, with artists discussing their work before a recorded extract of the live show.
The Scene Podcast is a series of little plays brought to you by Janno Media and Get Over It Productions.
A vicar faces a gun; you get a little play with room to stage it in your head.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A split-bill stand-up show turns chronic illness, bad advice, and uneven care into pointed comedy.
The Scene's Lambeth Fringe mini-series treats This Wasn't The Plan as a tight look at a split-bill stand-up show shaped less like a showcase than a conversation.
A Lambeth Fringe preview where executioners' workplace banter makes moral numbness sound horribly routine.
The Scene's third Lambeth Fringe instalment sets The Dying Wish in a clear festival context and keeps its bleak workplace comedy firmly in view.
A tap dance show turns washing racks, a psychiatrist's glasses, and an M4 picnic into family-history machinery.
The Scene duz Lambeth Fringe - Washing Machine Vortex follows Sarah M.K. Archdeacon and Hannah Lane through an autobiographical performance built from family relationships, dementia, Greek tragedy, psychoanalysis, and tap dance.
A strange, funny introduction to Bog Body, where peat preserves evidence and isolation deepens the mystery.
Bog Body shapes isolation, bog bodies, and peat-bog chemistry into a nicely strange piece of audio storytelling. Olivia Cordell roots the idea in moving to the UK after a breakup, visiting the British Museum, and encountering a bog body whose scars and wounds seemed to leave him…
Dice, divine mysteries, and the trouble with good intentions.
The Scene Podcast spotlights Iman and Stuti's split-bill show "This Wasn't The Plan" at Lambeth Fringe, with the pair saying they "feed off each other" but do not share the stage.
The Scene’s Lambeth Fringe episode features Sarah M.K.
The Scene duz Lambeth Fringe: Bog Body follows Olivia Cordell's show about the fictional Kilgarvin Woman and a researcher, Dr.
Terry Delaware argues that art becomes an investment precisely when wealthy buyers cannot appreciate it.
In The Scene's “Diary of a Sci-Fi Novelist,” Zilla's stalled novel competes with her paid work ghostwriting criminal memoirs.
Audio producer Sarah Tombling traces her path from BBC Appointments in the mid-1980s to a radio drama production assistant job advertised in the BBC newspaper Ariel.
Sound designer David Thomas describes more than 30 years of audio drama work and his long-running collaborations with Julian Simpson.
This episode features a short play called Gaia, set in a future where the younger generation puts the older on trial for environmental crimes.
An audio play composed of snippets from telecommunication conversations, exploring a relationship breakup.
In the season two finale, a mother prepares for the apocalypse in her cellar and insists her son join her.
A dystopian audio play where a younger generation interrogates an older survivor about environmental crimes.