Radio listener: Drama On 3 – Kafka The Musical | Tales from the Digital Archive | The Royal Wedding

Published on Wednesday 13 April 2011 15:42

In his Doctor Who days, David Tennant negotiated some bizarre plots, but tomorrow's drama on 3 – kafka the musical perhaps takes the biscuit.

Tennant takes the role of the playwright himself, who discovers, in what one can only call a Kafka-esque scenario, that he has to play himself in a musical about his own life.

Written by composer Murray Gold, the play also involves some of the women in Kafka's life – Milena Jesenska, Dora Diamant and Felice Bauer. Gold, who composed the music for Shameless, and Doctor Who, has also written the music for the programme.

Ownership of some of Kafka's archive material, including first drafts of his works, is the subject of legal dispute currently being pursued in a Tel Aviv courtroom. Litigation apart, however, how will scholars, biographers and archivists follow up many of today's writers when their drafts and e-mail correspondences are ephemeral electronic documents? In tales from the digital archive, archaeologist Christine Finn examines what clues are left of the creative process when writers use computers, leaving no tell-tale badly typed, scored and annotated drafts or manuscripts.

She visits Emory University in Atlanta, USA, which recently acquired Salman Rushdie's archive, and the British library in London, which is developing new approaches to digital archiving. She also discusses the topic with author Fay Weldon.

Friday sees much of the airwaves given over to certain royal nuptials at Westminster Abbey, where Radio 4's Edward Stourton will provide live coverage of the Kate'n'Willum show, while James Naughtie is the anchorman at Broadcasting House.

Other channels, too, are consumed by royal wedding fever. Radio 2, for instance, has a special outside broadcast edition of the chris evans breakfast show, while even Radio 3 has failed to avoid the contagion, with afternoon on 3 broadcasting a concert of royal music live from the Ulster Hall in Belfast.

Drama On 3 – Kafka The Musical

Tomorrow, Radio 3, 8pm

Tales from the Digital Archive

Tuesday, Radio 4, 11:30am

The Royal Wedding

Friday, Radio 4, 10am-1pm; Radio 5 Live, 10am-4pm

The Chris Evans Breakfast Show

Friday, Radio 2, 8am

Afternoon On 3

Friday, Radio 3, 2pm

&#149 This article was first published in The Scotsman on 23 April 2011