Production company Put It Out There Pictures is producing a radio drama for Myanmar in collaboration with ABC International Development and state broadcaster MRTV.

The company is known for producing message-based radio and TV dramas in countries like Afghanistan, where its most well known production is the hit Afghan action series ‘Eagle 4’ featuring an elite police unit tasked with battling the country’s most serious crimes on Tolo TV.

The drama, ‘Ma Ma Oo’, is an 8-episode, 20-minute radio serial written and produced for broadcast in Myanmar.

Set in a rural village, the series centred on a professional, young midwife called May as she navigated her way through her first week of work.

With guidance and mentoring from a traditional midwife based in the village – Ma Ma Oo, May is thrust into a series of dramatic events including family feuds, unplanned pregnancies, an HIV scare and a missing baby.

Along the way, she also manages to become romantically entangled with a local boy called Ko Ko.

With a focus on maternal health, the drama was used as a platform for exploring issues such as pre and postnatal care, HIV and contraception, with an overarching theme that encouraged husbands to take part in planning for pregnancy, caring for and supporting their wives.

The project was also designed to build capacity within MRTV, around the processes involved in developing, producing and recording drama for radio.

The majority of the characters cast in the series were MRTV staff who had never acted before.

Working alongside Cherie Mangrai from ABC International Development, Muffy Potter and Trudi-Ann Tierney from Put It Out There Pictures mentored the team on all aspects of the production from story development to post-production.