Made in Manchester continues ground-breaking experiment with drama about late poet laureate Ted Hughes
Had he lived, Hughes would have just turned 80 and to mark the occasion, Made In Manchester in a co-pro with Dark Smile, has produced Dreaming of Foxes – a drama loosely based on a true story about the poet’s Yorkshire childhood.
It’s the 8th radio drama the MIM/Dark Smile team has premiered via The Independent newspaper online this year. And MIM is promising even more to come with cutting edge drama aimed at younger audiences – and at people who would never even think about listening to radio drama. The project is supported by leading actors like Simon Callow, Samuel Barnett and Vicky Binns, by directors like Joyce Branagh and Adrian Bean (Doctors/Emmerdale) and by writers like Tim Fountain, Ian McMillan and Reggie Perrin creator David Nobbs.
MIM Creative Director Ashley Byrne says: “People said we couldn’t do it and there wouldn’t be an audience. Well with tens of thousands of downloads we are proving them wrong.
Mainstream radio is doing exceptionally well but as an industry we’re not really making the most of it. What we are doing is building on the enthusiasm for audio by delivering it through other means. Some people think audio via the web is somehow inferior, cheap and that it’s not really radio! But with these dramas we are proving that the web can be a platform for quality content and that it does provide scope for competition for traditional radio.”
Dreaming of Foxes is set in Devon and West Yorkshire and is recorded entirely on location at Ted Hughes’ former home in Heptonstall, near Hebden Bridge. It was been penned by Bury based writer Aelish Michael. It’s directed by Joyce Branagh. It stars Calderdale-based theatre, TV and radio actor Robert Garrett as Ted Hughes and seasoned stage and screen actor Ian Blower as Douglas Greenwood.
In the story, the late Poet Laureate is reunited with a long lost schoolboy friend after almost fifty years but what do these men have in common now except memories of old haunts and the landscape around Mytholmroyd which inspired them both?
The drama includes flashbacks to Ted Hughes’ childhood – and young Ted and his friends are played by three teenage actors from West Yorkshire - Joe Cotton, Joseph Moorhead and Kieran Bell.
