Listen to excerpts from Mapping the Soul and Hinterland.

Artist-in-Residence Lucy Gough is bringing British radio drama to the UC Davis stage, in her new work Hinterland, a two-part play about the search for the soul, premiering Dec. 1-4 in Main Theatre.

Gough wrote Hinterland for stage and radio — and the campus’s KDVS 90.3 FM will take advantage of the latter format, by presenting a live audio cast of Hinterland as it is performed the night of Dec. 2. Talkback sessions are planned after every performance.

Hinterland comprises two poetic dramas, one titled Mapping the Soul, pure radio drama, and the other taking the same name as the overall title, Hinterland, a hybrid of radio and theatre. Each piece charts the same story — “a journey to the edge, the place where things change,” according to a news release from the Department of Theatre and Dance.

The news release describes the play as a fusion of wild, savage earthiness and magic realism, imagination and transformation — all revolving around one core question: What is the soul?

Employing familiar biblical figures and myths, Hinterland weaves a story in which the soul is explored from many different perspectives and with many different results.

Hinterland dances from an 18th-century brain dissection to conversations between a 21st-century scientist and his red stiletto-shoed soul.

“An anatomist literally tries to find the tangible soul within the human body, sin-eaters and other creatures search hungrily for the soul, and a man believes there is no soul,” the news release states.

Gough wrote the dramas separately, then reworked the material before devising this production.

“Having written the stage play, I was then asked to do a radio play, and it became necessary to go back to the drawing board,” she said. “Radio has the potential to be very much inside the head, so the radio play was a good opportunity to take the play into (a) new realm, explore the philosophy of it all a bit more.”

Professor Bella Merlin said she “met” the British playwright through her radio dramas, and found herself instantly compelled to listen to and read as much of her work as she could.

“She miraculously combines urban, gritty almost urbane prose with metaphorical, metaphysical strands which haunt the writing. Her imagination is truly original.

“Lucy’s dramatization of Wuthering Heights for BBC Radio, featured the actual house — Wuthering Heights — speaking as the narrator of the piece. This unusual choice caused national debate.”

Merlin said British radio dramas are among the most popular and revered genres. “The BBC prides itself on being one of the main outlets for new writing,” Merlin said. “Until recent years, there was a new radio play every afternoon of the week. It's not uncommon to hear voices such as Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, and indeed American actors such as F. Murray Abrahams on BBC radio dramas and serials.”

Gough said she is excited to bring the power and prestige of this format to UC Davis.

She said she hopes to move audiences, “to make them think, to take them to another place for a short time, to realize how powerful their own imaginations are, for them to realize they went to that place in their own head.”

Read the news release.

Reporting by Janice Bisgaard, publicity manager for the Department of Theatre and Dance.

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: Hinterland, two poetic dramas that take the audience into a dark surreal landscape sculpted in sound and voice, each presenting the same story — "the search for the soul on a journey to the edge, the place where things change"

WHEN:

• Wednesday-Saturday, Dec. 1-4 — 8 p.m.
• Saturday, Dec 4 — 2 p.m.

WHERE: Main Theatre

TICKETS: $17-19 general, $12-14 students, children and seniors. Available through the Mondavi Center box office: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or mondaviarts.org.

DISCOUNT: $5 tickets are available for school and youth groups of 10 or more, at the teacher or group leader’s request. To make arrangements, call the Department of Theatre and Dance, (530) 752 -5863.