bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

sponsorType

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

factSheets

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

copyrighted

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

Li Bin is being bullied at school, May is flirting on chat lines, John is playing classical music to charm his girlfriends, and Ricky is getting over his triad past.

 Welcome to the world of Songbirds - where every Saturday and Sunday the latest events in the lives of Songbirds High School and Urban University get broadcast to Hong Kong.

 It is an English-language radio soap opera that has captured the imagination of students (especially the second-language English students for whom it is intended) all over the SAR. There are 5,000 hits a week on www.songbirds. com.hk, thousands of listeners for every programme, and some teachers saying this is one of the best things that has happened in the English classroom for years.

 And now the Songbirds net is spreading even further, with a radio drama competition that has attracted more attention than anyone at RTHK imagined.

 They had expected a few dozen entries, admitted head of Radio Four, Richard Tsang - whose idea was to get the audience into the studios to record their first radio scripts in a competition.

 But instead, teams from 98 local and six international schools - in separate judging categories - signed up, and the Songbirds production team spent last week caged in the studio.

 'We were amazed,' executive producer Calvin Lai said. 'Our Songbirds are really baby birds - they only started broadcasting a year ago - but already the programme is part of Hong Kong.'  Each team - reading either an all-girls script, an all-boys script, or a mixed script - has 20 minutes to rehearse and record: for most it will be their first time in a radio studio. They are competing to win a trophy, to get a chance to hear themselves on Radio Four in mid-December, and - for all participants - to experience the thrill of radio recording.

 At an afternoon forum at the RTHK headquarters in Broadcast Drive recently, the series' writer and deviser, Dino Mahoney - with the help of several of the regular young actors on the series - gave a short talk on how, and how not, to read for the radio.

 A roomful of students and teachers listened to advice ranging from the value of silence, to understanding your character, to the importance of not drinking fizzy sodas while recording.

 Christina Ho Kwan-yu and Tracey Wong-fung, both 17, were two students in the team from Pooi To Middle School in Kowloon City.

 They had practised their short dialogue about boyfriend problems for several weeks before recording, and admitted they were a little nervous.

 'I'm Melody, and I try to steal May's boyfriend,' said Christina, explaining the wide-ranging saga of friendships, arguments and misunderstandings that was par for the course in any Songbirds script.

 'We have really improved our pronunciation,' Christina explained, although earlier the two were fretting at how many of the other representatives of local schools seemed to speak English with disconcertingly fluent North American accents.

 Sam Yau, 15, is one of the regular actors on the show. He plays Ted, a boy who is always cracking jokes, worrying about his height and running into trouble.

 He is proud of having been a member of the Songbirds team 'since the beginning' in January. His French teacher at La Salle College was sent a fax saying they needed actors, 'so some people tried out, and I was the one who got chosen'.

 He was the youngest, and in the beginning was rather 'nervous and tense' although says he has now loosened up. Which is just as well because at one recent recording he had the wrong page open.

 'Everyone was saying 'Hi Ted, hi Ted' and it was nowhere on my script. So I just improvised while I tried to find out where we were,' he said.

For Sam his experience has been about 'being an actor and expressing myself more'. He did not tell his friends about it, 'but now I think they all know because schools are using it as a supplement to their English classes'.

 Agnes, his sister, joined the weekly recording sessions in April when another actor left. 'My brother kept talking about how good it was, so I went for an audition.' She plays the character of Emily. 'A mainland student, Li Bin, has just come to the school and the other students are criticising her, but Emily tries to help.'  This kind of situation is quite typical in the series - which includes characters like Rosa the Eco Warrior staging one person protests against polystyrene lunchboxes in the canteen, or Ricky who joined a triad group and is now breaking free from their grip.

 'I have a Hong Kong-born Indian student who wanted to join the series,' said Mahoney, who when not writing two scripts a week is a full-time English lecturer at City University. 'So I said I'd write her a character, but I wanted to include racist issues and she might find it upsetting sometimes.'  But the student assured him she did not mind, and told Mahoney about how she had been the butt of racist jokes at school. She said how difficult it was when she used to take lunches to schools and the other pupils were cruel about the curry. 'So I wrote an episode where that happened to her character, Ayisha.'  He does his 'research' by talking to his students, and to secondary school students.

 'I ask them what's happening in their lives and they tell me they're worried about school fees, or that they have to juggle part-time jobs, or that they are meeting people on the Internet, so that's what I write about.'  A story thread was about chat rooms - with his character May trying to solve her love life problems through the Internet - and he was fascinated by the results of his research.

 'One student gave me a 75-page printout of a conversation with a boy she knew through ICQs [chat rooms].'  Others let him watch as they went into their regular cyber-haunts, 'and it was sometimes quite flirty', he laughed.

 Radio Four is a mainly classical music station, and Mr Tsang wants the scripts to emphasise the 'opera' in soap opera.

 'The idea is that a soap opera and drama should be integrated in an arts and music channel. It is unusual, but I think it works.'  With the success of this year's Songbirds contest - the judging has not finished, but half-way through, the quality is remarkably high - the Radio Four team is already planning to expand the contest next year.

 'We'd like to have a whole Songbirds festival - with scriptwriting as well as acting, so they can learn a whole range of radio skills,' Mr Tsang said.

 'This is a soap opera for students, and we want to allow the students to reclaim it.' 



Soap for students