Student Radio Association

'Slow Hands' is RaW’s first ever radio soap opera.  With weekly 10-minute episodes over a 15-week period, and its web of characters and storylines, it has been challenging to condense Slow Hands into 7 minutes, but hopefully the vibe and attitude of the programme are apparent from the audio. 

Set in and around Warwick University, 'Slow Hands' is frank, unflinching and honest.  Looking to student realities for inspiration, it addresses real taboos for young people today which are often unexplored.  Ali suffers from OCD, Ella battles with female impotence, Dave dies from drinking too much, and Nush is forced to get a job as a life model (cringe!) in order to fund her studies.  'Slow Hands' squares up to real issues as opposed to the more convoluted plotlines of some TV soaps. 

The creation of 'Slow Hands' has been a Herculean, yet rewarding, task.  It began as a way of encouraging Freshers and new RaW members to get involved in the radio station and meet people.  Soap operas traditionally have massive casts, making them the ideal medium for mass participation, and brilliant mechanisms of self-publicity: with 8 main characters and 12 extras, 'Slow Hands' has hauled in a huge friends-and-flatmates listener base, alongside listeners simply intrigued to follow particular storylines. 

We embraced the fact that we were writing for radio and used this to our advantage.  The medium allowed us to use echo for thoughts and memories; offer characters’ internal monologues; directly address the listener; and present events in all kinds of formats (phone-calls, Facebook messages, discussions on the psychiatric couch, and even meta-radio techniques like voxpops and interviews).  These techniques encouraged variety and listener-character intimacy, without detracting from the soap’s commitment to realism. 

Throughout the project, the script of each episode was never set in stone: characters and plotlines were constantly revised as the cast brought their own interpretations.  An online forum for cast members’ criticisms and suggestions accompanied relaxed and experimental rehearsals to ensure that the script was always a collaborative process rather than a fixed entity. 

Although some of the cast had experience with stage acting, none had acted for radio before.  So, prior to beginning any recordings, we organised a workshop with drama students which focussed on using the voice for maximum impact and transferring body language into vocal nuance.  This was also an eye-opener for the writing process, as it taught me how to get around various hurdles such as wanting to portray Ali’s vulnerability whilst maintaining his tough-talking vocal style: different ways of breathing and swallowing became equivalent to facial expressions in this instance. 

Meeting weekly broadcasting deadlines has been exhilarating and has left us all breathless!  All of the cast and crew are full-time students and have active extra-curricular lives so the creation of 'Slow Hands' took a lot of organisation, adaptability, communication and pragmatism – and a lot of last-minute Plan Bs. 

A typical weekly schedule…

Saturday: Tash writes first draft of next episode.

Saturday evening: Scripts sent out.

Sunday: Criticisms and suggestions from cast members offered on online forum.

Monday: Second draft of the script sent out.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Rehearsals and recordings.

Thursday: Editing.

Friday: Broadcast.

We have supplemented the weekly episodes with a blog called 'Slow Hands: The Boxset'.  As well as offering episode catch-ups and welcoming comments and ideas from the student audience, it has hosted much multiplatform material, including Producer Tash’s rehearsal vodcasts, video interviews with cast members, photo galleries and interactive polls.  'Slow Hands' has been a deliciously pacy and provocative programme to produce, executed with dash and dynamism by all involved.