Listeners to BBC Radio 4's The Friday Play are to be treated to an unexpected sprinkling of Hollywood stardust after Sigourney Weaver, star of Aliens and The Ice Storm, agreed to appear in a new drama for the station later this year.

Controller Mark Damazer revealed yesterday that Weaver would make her BBC acting debut playing a Vietnam field nurse trying to come to terms with the conflict years later, in the 60-minute radio play.

No Background Music, which will be broadcast in September, is based on interviews with real life Vietnam field nurses, collected over 15 years by the US writer Normi Noel.

Mr Damazer also announced that Daniel Barenboim, the acclaimed pianist and conductor, will deliver next year's series of Reith Lectures from a variety of locations around the world including Jerusalem, Chicago and London.

The annual lectures, to be broadcast in a new 9am slot in April and May next year, would examine "the extent to which our culture has allowed the visual to dominate the aural ... and whether we need to re-prioritise the ear over the eye".

Mr Damazer, appointed in September last year, said drama was one of a number of areas he was looking to develop in the coming months.

Speaking at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch, he said that a planned series of 12 recordings of works by "great British playwrights" such as Alan Bennett, Tom Stoppard and Alan Ayckbourn would be broadcast next year on Saturday afternoons.

The "ultimate aim", Mr Damazer said, was to get big-name writers to produce new plays for Radio 4 as well as bringing on new talent, adding he was already "hopeful" of securing a new drama written by Bennett.

He said that the station, which has 9.3 million listeners according to the latest official figures, was in good shape but he hoped to also introduce more dramas based on recent news events and other current affairs programming that were not refracted "through the John Humphrys, Today programme prism".

These would include a profile-style slot of a figure in the news and more "eccentric and witty" biographies and obituaries.

Mr Damazer, a former deputy director of BBC News, added that he was "two to three months" away from deciding on a new permanent presenter for Home Truths, the programme formerly hosted by the late DJ John Peel.

A rolling cast of presenters has been fronting the show since his death last year.