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In the Radio Drama Company no two days are ever the same. We have a diverse and wonderful company of actors as an in-house resource for all network radio departments, who often have very specific needs (I’ve been asked for accents from Norwegian, Mexican and Thai to Syrian, Chinese and even Inuit – we can’t always stretch quite that far!). It’s always busy but never, ever dull.

I honestly think that being a member of the RDC is one of the best jobs in acting. In any given day, actors can find themselves working in almost any area of 成人论坛 Radio – drama, books, comedy, factual, documentaries, news, current affairs and presentation trailers for the radio networks. Looking at the last fortnight, for instance,  they’ve been involved in a new adaptation of The Forsytes, a modern cop drama, a creepy Book at Bedtime, a Front Row special on Emile Zola, the new series of Incredible Woman with Jeremy and Rebecca Front, a documentary series about the history of British Liberalism, a Radio 3 evening of Nordic plays, playing an elf in the Bridget Christie Christmas special, deep south Americans for Tina C, voicing a translation of a 12-year-old Syrian boy for The Listening Project and reading Umberto Eco for Free Thinking. And that’s not even half of what was in the diary.

The RDC stretches you further and at greater speed than any other acting job. Actors love the breadth of work they get to tackle, often at very short notice. They also love the lack of hair, makeup and costuming (although I always secretly want to return to a photo of the RDC in the 1930s (pictured), where all the men are wearing suits and the women are in cloche hats – standards have really slipped).

Starting on the RDC can be quite an experience, whether you’re 21 or 61. One of our recent older actors found himself on his first day attempting to convey a female alien giving birth through its head – this is not an entirely unusual occurrence. They’ve played dragons, elves, aliens, bees, ghosts and T-shirts (really). They’ve been to heaven, hell, Hull and everywhere in between.

But the best thing I think about the RDC is the air of camaraderie that prevails. In the absence of the old rep system in theatres, the RDC may be the closest we now come to that. There are no Winnebagos or private dressing rooms in radio – everyone waits between scenes in Green Room and that means a chance for mingling that is almost unrivalled anywhere. This is particularly brilliant for young actors who can find themselves swapping stories and getting advice from stars of stage and screen. In recent months alone, they’ve found themselves sharing a studio with June Whitfield, Maureen Lipman, Lesley Manville, Sheila Hancock, Richard Wilson, Stephen Rea, Lindsay Duncan, Anne-Marie Duff, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alex Jennings, Meera Syal, David Threlfall, Henry Goodman, Juliet Aubrey, James Purefoy, Indira Varma, Daniel Mays, Claire Rushbrook and Ralph Ineson. In the next couple of weeks they’ll join Bill Nighy in the return of the brilliant Charles Paris.

To be a member of the RDC you have to be a number of things (a brilliant actor being just one of them) but from our point of view being a good company member is pretty high on list. Sometimes you’ll be the star, sometimes you’ll have two lines in a Swedish accent, and in the words of Kipling you’ll have to “treat those two impostors just the same”. There’s no room for egos or tantrums, and thankfully I’ve not had to deal with any in the two and a half years I’ve been here. Once you’ve been “on the Rep” you become a member of the radio drama family and this can be, like a real family, a relationship that lasts a lifetime. One of the loveliest moments in my time here was the night last year when we welcomed some new young actors into the company and they got to hear from Archers legend Ted Kelsey about his own start in radio with the company 60 years before.

I look forward every day to catching up with the actors. They are funny, warm, generous, talented and they have the best anecdotes you could ever ask for. Sometimes keeping track of their diaries can be like herding cats and trying to do a jigsaw with jelly simultaneously, but 成人论坛 Radio would be very much lost without them.

Clare Ewing is Radio Drama Company Co-ordinator

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