Story, recording, editing - everything in Steffen Pilney's radio play "Tod auf der Kegelbahn!" was done by himself. The student of the Oldenburg Master's programme "Integrated Media" has received a lot of praise for his debut work.
It's supposed to be a comic radio play thriller. Steffen Pilney realises this immediately when it comes to his thesis. Almost a year later, the Master's student invites people to the premiere of "Tod auf der Kegelbahn!" at the Unitheater: there is a lot of praise - and a lot of hilarity. "Fortunately, they laughed in the right places," says Steffen Pilney with a wink. The 26-year-old looks back fondly on the premiere of his first work: around 70 radio play fans came to the Oldenburg University Theatre (OUT) on a wintry Sunday afternoon. "I didn't even know many of the guests. They were simply radio play fans who hadn't come out of friendship with me, but actually because of my play. When I realised that - it was the best thing ever," recalls the young author. He is happy to have organised a real premiere after all. "I actually just wanted to put out a crate of beer and celebrate a little with the speakers, but of course it was much nicer this way," says the student of the Integrated Media master's programme.
Telling stories in a completely different way
Pilney had already decided at the end of 2015 that the practical part of his final thesis would be a radio play. "The great thing about radio plays is that you can tell stories in a completely different way to a film, for example," he says. It is a very special kind of challenge to transport the audience into a strange world and create unique settings with good voice actors, sounds and music. The Leer native only discovered his love of audio history late in life. "I was never the classic radio play cassette child. The Three??, TKKG - I wasn't particularly interested in any of that," says Pilney. It wasn't until I was 15 that I started listening to the scary stories about ghost hunter John Sinclair. "That was just great head cinema."
During this time, he also discovered his penchant for comedy - a penchant that is also evident in "Death at the Bowling Alley!": Private detective Wilhelm "Willie" Walter is tasked by his former partner, chief police inspector Bernd Stockhammer, with finding clues to the murder of a young woman. The strange thing is the crime scene: the young woman was found in a bowling alley. What was she doing there? And what do femme fatale Lolita LaSalle and mafia boss Salvatore "Sal" Morano have to do with it? Willie Walter sets off on a search and uncovers an incredible conspiracy in the best film noir style.
A flash of inspiration on the train
The outlandish content of his radio play began in a train compartment. "I was on my way to Berlin and suddenly had a flash of inspiration - the title of my radio play: Death at the Bowling Alley. It just fitted perfectly," recalls the young man. While travelling, Pilney got to work on his laptop and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Back in Oldenburg, he met with the artistic director of OUT, Kai Janssen, who popped in one day at campus radio, where Pilney was working. "I simply asked him if he knew any actors who would like to take part in a radio play," says Pilney.
The two of them organised an audition. Over the summer, 13 actors came together for the project - most of them from OUT. The recordings took a month in the recording studios. An exhausting time, as Pilney was simultaneously active as producer, editor and sound engineer. He had already acquired a basic understanding of editing software during his studies, and the seminar "Film scoring" also paid off.
And what happens next? Pilney recently submitted his work to the Berlin Radio Play Festival. He is now waiting for re-registering students to tell him whether he will be able to present "Tod auf der Kegelbahn!" at the festival for the independent German-language radio play scene in March. But he definitely wants to continue writing radio plays. "I have a great desire to develop a series of short plays based on the horror radio plays of the 80s," he says. As soon as he has finished writing his master's thesis, he wants to get started.
