Box Turtle Arts Journal

Audio dramas are among the most versatile forms of media. The lack of a visual component allows creators to do some incredibly compelling things such as focusing on sound effects, voice acting and characterization without having to worry about visuals. 

This intro article is the start of my series on audio dramas. In other words, Miguel is letting me ramble about my hyper-fixation. Buckle up folks.

Audio dramas predate television, first appearing in 1921 with a brief sketch comedy called A Rural Line on Education, a comedy about two farmers struggling to use the same telephone line according to Straz Center. Despite its short run time, the introduction to the medium was met with high reception. Quickly audio dramas gained popularity in the form of play readings and eventually weekly serialized shows. 

Modern audio dramas tend to follow the serialized show format. Popular audio dramas like The Magnus Archives or Welcome to Nightvale have done this over the span of their own ‘seasons’. The stories usually contain a overarching-narrative of some kind, a major attraction for listeners interested in a connected story. 

One can trace the start of the modern audio drama era to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The quirky comedy about the end of the world and the travels of Arthur after the fact has become a staple of the audio drama, eventually getting its own book and movie adaptations. This audio drama set the trend of modern podcasts following the genre of science fiction, with other mainstream ones leaning into horror.

With the popularity of streaming services like Spotify and Apple over the past decade, accessibility of audio dramas has grown, leading to a boom in new content. Fan culture is also a massive proponent of growth (ah yes, a surprising thank you to Tumblr, Reddit, and Twitter). Fanart on these sites was what initially attracted me to listen to The Magnus Archives, the audio drama that started my whole interest in the form. Specifically with The Magnus Archives the presence online was filled with collaborative fans searching for answers to the mysteries the podcast has. Artists, theorizers, discord users and other communities draw people into these stories.

This column aims to analyze the good, the bad, and the absolutely unhinged audio dramas the medium has to offer. We’ll be looking at mainstream podcasts to the more obscure, defining what can be classified as an audio drama and most importantly letting me dump my opinions on the page. While I may not have an audio drama of my own, I certainly do have a page.