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Radio Fairytales

Slovak radio fairytale is 50. To be more precise, the production of radio plays for children in the Slovak radio started 50 years ago. Since September 20, 1953, Slovak children as well as their parents have been regularly switching on their radio receivers every Sunday morning to listen to a popular fairytale. Generations have been brought up on stories written by celebrated authors not only from Slovakia. Even today, families rush to tune in the public radio’s main station shortly before 8 in the morning. According to Jan Uliciansky, the head of the radio plays for children department, the most popular fairytales proved to be adaptations of literary works by renowned Slovak writer Maria Durickova. But not only original texts appeal to young listeners. Uliciansky: An important part of the history of children radio plays is the production of classical titles such as Bambi. We have produced a beautiful version of this book. All world famous stories like the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan or the Little Prince are also included in our repertoire. As to Slovak folklore, there has probably been no story that was not transferred into a radio play.
To be able to run a series of radio plays on Sunday mornings for 50 years is a fact worth celebrating. Production of such stories for children is not a Slovak specialty. Other EBU radio stations bring similar plays to their audiences too. Uliciansky: The tradition of production of radio plays for children is still alive. Many countries have the advantage of publishing these plays on CDs. There has been only one Slovak radio play released on CD so far. I hope that the fairy tale about the Golden girl spinning a thread will be followed by many more titles in the future.The problem of no radio plays released on CD is rooted in the communist era. Back then, the state run music agency Opus monopolised production of recorded fairytales. Although the publishing house of the Slovak radio was established 10 years ago, it lacks behind in bringing fairytales on the market. Within the 50 years of its existence, the radio play for children has undergone a significant transformation. It is not only the technical quality that has been changed during that time. What do Slovak children listen to today and what were they listening to on Sunday morning 50 years ago?Uliciansky: Well, the difference is rather sharp. In the archives of the Slovak radio there is a note that the first radio fairytale was entitled “How black coal got angry”. You can imagine that a story about angry coal written in 1950 must have had something in common with the communist propaganda. So the 1950’s, 60’s and the beginning of 70’s there were tendencies to mix text for children with the state ideology. We experienced various workshops which gave us directions to present the main characters of the stories as those who bring new ideas of the regime to the youngest generation. Radio plays for children have overcome the socialistic period. Today, the main character does not have to be a brave tractor driver. Children can now enjoy stories of a clumsy garbage truck or a gloomy keyboard not to speak about various creatures present in plays based on Slovak folk tales. Fairytales produced by the public radio regularly represent the country at the international festival Prix Ex Aequo where they record a considerable success.Uliciansky: Of course, the greatest success would be if there was a functioning exchange of these texts between participating countries. We would be very happy to say that some of the Slovak plays for children were broadcast by 10 other world radio stations. This is one of the aims of the Prix Ex Aequo festival as well. To mark the 50th anniversary of the production of radio plays for children, Slovak radio has prepared several events. And so, there will be a meeting with directors, actors and writers of the most successful fairytales held in the building of the upside down pyramid; for all those who are a devoted Sunday morning listeners, there is a multimedia CD being launched to present the history of production of these plays in this country. However, the cr?me de la cr?me of the whole celebration is considered to be airing radio plays gems hidden in the archives of the public radio.

http://www.rsi.sk/ang/culture/txt/3009_fairytales.html