The cast of The Abbey's award-winning production of Marina Carr's By The Bog Of Cats and its director, Patrick Mason, recently squeezed into RTE's new drama studio to record the play, which will be broadcast on Easter Sunday. Ann Walsh, former producer of The Arts Show, has been appointed Producer in Charge of Radio Drama. She hopes that this collaboration will be the first of many and that "other Irish theatres will bring productions to our revamped Studio 9 - so that a national audience can hear the plays that they may have missed in the theatre." Broadcasts of Carr's earlier plays, The Mai and Portia Coughlan are planned for later in the year, and Walsh also hopes to encourage new playwriting for radio.

The distinctive cadences of J.M. Synge's dialogue will be also be given a welcome airing on RTE over the next few months, when all seven of his plays will be broadcast, to mark the 90th anniversary of his death on March 24th, 1909. First in line (Radio 1, next Tuesday, 9.02 p.m.) will be a 1948 production of Riders To The Sea, in which the Abbey actress (and Synge's fiancee) Maura O'Neill (Molly Algood) played Maurya.