Clare Shaw Yusra and me 15 July 2022
Polly Thomas is widely recognised as one of the UK’s leading audio producer-directors. Her award-winning work has explored the potential of the medium, including location-based recording, international co-production, community activism and simultaneous live relay. She works in live and broadcast performance as writer, producer and director, most prominently with Thomas Carter Projects, an international media and performance company which she co-founded with Gary Carter.

COMING UP

RESTLESS DREAMS
BBC Radio 4 / 15th June 2024, 15:15
— produced by Polly Thomas

The latest audio drama from award winning writer Dan Rebellato, part of Radio 4’s series to mark the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death. Cast includes Anton Lesser, Tracy-Ann Oberman and Henry Goodman.

Restless Dreams follows Max Brod’s desperate train journey in 1939 from Prague, fleeing the Nazis. In his suitcase are manuscripts, many of them unpublished, of works by Franz Kafka. On one level, this is a wartime thriller, a tense story of one man smuggling a jewel of world literature to safety. On the other, it is a Kafkaesque nightmare, teetering between reality and hallucination, as Brod’s encounters with train staff, border guards and fellow passengers seem to pass between wakefulness and dreaming, echoing Kafka’s writing.

sound design Eloise Whitmore / production manager Darren Spruce / illustration Ed Duffill / produced and directed by Polly Thomas

— a Naked Production for BBC Radio 4

SONG FROM FAR AWAY
BBC Radio 4 / 18th May 2024, 15.00 / Available on BBC Sounds until 18th June 2024
— produced by Polly Thomas

Starring multi-award-winning singer/songwriter and actor Will Young, writen by Olivier Award-winning Simon Stephens and Mark Eitzel

A powerful and deeply personal letter to those left behind. One crisp winter day in New York, Willem receives a phone call — it’s time to go home. Home to Amsterdam — to estranged family and forgotten relationships. As he begins to grieve, he reaches out to the brother he lost.

A BSL interpreted and subtitled film wil be available for broadcast on the BBC programme website – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zfq3

Based on the original stage production directed by Kirk Jameson, from Thomas Hopkins, Guy Chapman and HOME. Additional Composer/Musical Supervisor on the stage production – Paul Schofield. Additional Musical Content – Julian Starr. Full stage credits >

photo : Michael Wharley

directed for audio by Polly Thomas / assistant producer Louis Blatherwick / production manager Darren Spruce / executive producer Eloise Whitmore / sound design Jon Nicholls

— a Thomas Carter Project for BBC Radio 4

REQUIEM

Sandford St Martin 2024 audio shortlist

Harrison Knights and Misia Butler‘s debut BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Drama, first broadcast BBC Radio 4 / 4th July 2023, 14:15

Inspired by true events, Requiem follows young priest Paul as he navigates the prejudice and pain surrounding the setup of a care and education centre for AIDS sufferers in the 80s. The drama is set around the structure of a requiem mass, woven with traditional and contemporary choral music.

Performers : Jonathan Case, Olugbeminiyi Bammodu, Rosa Hesmondhalgh and Nadia Albina

Singers : Emilia Bertolini, Venetia Iga, Laurence Kilsby, Oscar Hansen, MD/original music composition Oscar Osicki. Additional vocal arrangements : Harrison Knights

Sound design Paul Cargill / illustration Ed Duffill / production management Darren Spruce / executive producer Eloise Whitmore

Directed by Harrison Knights and Misia Butler / produced by Polly Thomas

The poem, Jesus at the Gay Bar, was written by Jay Hulme

— a Naked Production for BBC Radio 4