Adventures in Odyssey, 6 December 2011
An ingenious tale involving a little girl objecting to having to do chores
before going to the cinema or enjoying herself. Although her parents try to make her see reason, she believes that the responsibility
is an imposition on her time, and resolves to organize a strike amongst local children with the slogan "Chores no More."
She meets her friends at Whit's Ice Cream Shop: although a shop-owner by trade, Whit
is also a wise person, a counsellor and friend to the children, who can help them understand their responsibilities. He tries
to make the little girl understand why chores are important - not so much because they help to keep the house clean, but because
they prepare children for the responsibilities of adulthood, when they will have homes and families of their own.
The message of the drama is a commonsense one - and one which seems
particularly appropriate to this website, in which every production (and there are a lot of them) communicates a particular
lesson or theme. Nonetheless writer Marshal Younger has great fun temporarily turning the idea of parental responsibility
on its head, to show the little girl what would happen if her mother and father were to abnegate their roles permanently.
Embellished with a jaunty musical score, Chores no More is a great example
of how radio drama can be used to educate as well as entertain.
