Leon: A Reflective Interview
Set a year after the events of Ruth. Leon has become quite the celebrity due to his interview with Ruth. With great fame however, also comes great guilt for Leon. All will be revealed in this interview with Leon Simmons....
"A blank page is both an exciting and terrifying thing. But it always remains a chance worth taking."
Harold Pinter
About Leon: A Reflective Interview
This project was something that I was thinking about upon creating Ruth. The ending of that story leaves Leon in a very interesting place, someone who initially was selfish and irrational who then heard Ruth's story and begun to question his actions. I really couldn't stop thinking about where Leon would go after this so I decided to address in a radio format.
​
The main reason for this radio format was because it was era appropriate. Radio was still the dominant form of storytelling back in the 1950s as televisions hadn't really found their footing yet in general households. I always look at Michel Chion's Audio-Visual theory when doing more radio, in that the sound we hear can create a clear image in our head. The challenge of telling a story entirely through sound is something that I find incredibly fascinating, this radio drama is no different. Telling a condensed story about the guilt Leon feels after the the events of Ruth, it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
​
This was my first attempt at a spin-off of a project that I've already done. I've never once before taken a character from an existing story and crafted a narrative around them. It was a really interesting experience, having spent a fair amount of time with Leon as a character, it opened new layers to him making him the protagonist of his own piece. I think should the opportunity arise, I would really jump at the chance to explore both Leon and Ruth further in the future.
Callum Battlemuch
Leon Simmons
Amy Lockwood
Ally Mathews
Inspirations
This project was one that I really wrote with little input from external sources but there are a few things that I took inspiration from in terms of presentation and format.
Big Finish Productions - This is a company that is exclusively producing audio dramas for the BBC series Doctor Who (which is one of my favourite TV Shows of all time). The way they take characters from existing stories and present them in a new and interesting way, putting them through unique and clever stories, is something that I really take pleasure from hearing and would love this to have the same effect. I've never done a spin-off before but looking back, this is a lot easier because of the existing character to work from, rather than creating a new character from scratch.
Don't Look Up - Adam Mckay's newest film isn't something I was fond of overall, but, I found one scene in it to be a great inspiration for this piece. A scene where the lead characters are on a talk show and are just being manipulated and somewhat verbally mocked by their hosts. That's what I wanted to portray within this radio drama, showing the toxic side of journalism. Portraying the cut-throat and often times selfish reality of media journalism, that they would manipulate you just to get their story for the day.