Richard Toscan

Richard Toscan’s audio dramas have been broadcast by the BBC (Radio 1 & World Service), ABC (Australia), CBC (Canada), and in the US by Pacifica and NPR. He was executive producer and story editor of the first contemporary audio drama series to attract huge audiences in the US with the equivalent of 30 Million downloads and was an Armstrong Award nominee for Creative Use of the Radio Medium. He’s been a judge for regional and national screenwriting competitions and writers he’s coached have won the Academy’s Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. He’s also served as Dean of USC’s School of Theatre and Associate Dean of the School of Cinema-Television.

His plays have been produced in Los Angeles and staged at New Dramatists (New York) and other regional theatres. His Playwriting Seminars 2.0: A Handbook on the Art & Craft of Dramatic Writing with an Introduction to Screenwriting continues to be a widely used resource in the field. His Writing Audio Drama: Making Scripts that Work for Fiction & True Crime Podcasts is one of the first guides to this specialty. John and Maria Tenuto’s book on his groundbreaking work with Lucasfilm was published in 2024.

From the Los Angeles Times: “[Toscan’s audio series] not only has taken radio drama one step beyond in terms of sound quality, but also has bridged the gap between the deceptively simple, ‘Theater of the Mind’ wonderment of radio’s past with the technological wizardry of its present. The result is a fun, spine-tingling, mind-bending piece of entertainment.”

He continues to consult with writers in theatre, film, episodic tv, and audio drama.