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Dateline: 29th May, 2009
Live Drama to Return to TV Satellite broadcaster Sky Arts is to bring live drama back to Britain's TV screens. The channel, which is subscription only, is to commission six short plays which will be broadcast live on Wednesday evenings from 8th July. The plays will be written by non-dramatists - poets and novelists primarily - and performed by a company of twenty actors under the guidance of Sky Arts: Theatre Live! (as the series will be known) artistic director Sandi Toksvig. Each play will be rehearsed for three weeks (rehearsals for the first start at the Orange Tree in Richmond in June) and will be performed in front of a live audience. Michael Dobbs and Nicci French are among the authors and Fiona Laird and John Alderton will be two of the directors. Pauline Collins has been announced as one of the actors. "For the first quarter-century of British Television drama was live," Toksvig said in a press statement." Live drama has a rawness and immediacy in which anything can and did happen including on one sad occasion the death of the leading actor. Now Sky Arts brings back genuine 'reality' television – drama as it happens, whatever happens. Vibrant, immediate, warts and all. I started my career in live television. It has an energy that cannot be found elsewhere and I am delighted to be going back." There have been experiments in live drama on TV in recent years - The Bill has had two live episodes, in 2003 and 2005 - but there has been no regular live drama since 1984 when the BBC's Play for Today finished.
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