Storytelling For Active & Interactive Media

(Douglas Rushkoff)

This seminar, designed primarily for writers and performers, will explore the story as a form for communication, and consider how storytelling and engagement change depending on the medium. Students will begin by analyzing narrative in storytelling, theater, the written word, comics and film. We will then go on to translate the main components of the story to interactive media by developing scripts for interactive storytelling projects and performance.

Weekly readings will include both examples of myth and story as well as critical approaches to their structure - the Bible, Aristotle, Joseph Campbell, Russian folk tales, Ibsen, Shaw, Brecht, Robert McKee (story), Scott McLoud, a fantasy role-playing game, a bit of Rushkoff, and a novel by either Dick, Stephenson, Gibson, or Sterling. This is all subject to change, based on the class composition and instructor's mood.

Classes will consist of seminar discussions, as well as active experimentation with storytelling. Students will tell a story, write a short story, a scene for a movie, and a short sequential narrative. Then, students will - either individually or in groups - develop stories for new media or new media scenarios, such as SMS, the Internet, or technologically augmented performance.

Week One:  Finding Narrative

Reading; none

Lab: Knock Knock exercise

Week Two: The Poetics

Reading: The Poetics by Aristotle (translated by Malcolm Heath)

     Lab: Knock Knock continued

Week Three: Going Backwards

     Reading: David Ball, Backwards and Forwards

              Handout from The Bible.

     Lab: Tell a story, group one.

Week Four: Drama, Character, and Tension

     Reading: Egri, Art of Dramatic Writing

     Lab: Tell a story, group two.

Week Five: Story as Performance

     Reading: Sawyer, Way of the Storyteller

     Lab: Re-Tell a story, groups one and two.

Week Six: Doll's House

     Reading: Doll's House, Ibsen. (Or watch movie.)

          Shaw, Quintessence of Ibsenism (handout)

     Assignment: Outline Dramatic Events

     Lab: Sketch plotline together; watch reversal

     Instruction: Screenplay format.

Week Seven: Breaking Frame

     Reading:

Brecht, Brecht on Theater

     Assignment: write one scene of your Story as a play or screenplay.

     Lab: Groups established for interactive storytelling experiments.

March 9 Class Canceled
March 16 Spring Break

Week Eight: Sequential Storytelling
(Wednesday March 23)

     Reading: Scott McLoud, Understanding Comics

     Lab: Pose Plastique

     Studio: A Groups present proposals

Week Nine: Interactive Storytelling
(Friday, March 25, 10:00am - makeup class )

     Reading: Chris Crawford, Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling Part I

Read one PART of Crawford's Interactive Storytelling each week from now on.

     Lab: Fantasy Role-playing Game

     Studio: B Groups present proposals

Week Ten through Fourteen

     Reading: Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces

'A' groups present on weeks 10 and 12; 'B' groups present on weeks 11 and 13. Everyone presents on week 14.

Rushkoff will assign additional readings to each group for weeks 11, 12, and 13, based on their chosen projects.

REQUIRED:

The Poetics by Aristotle (translated by Malcolm Heath)

Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper); ISBN: 0140446362; (March 1997)

Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Publisher: Mythos Books: ISBN: 0691017840

Backwards and Forwards by David Ball

Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr (Trd); ISBN: 0809311100; (September 1998)

The Art of Dramatic Writing, by Lalos Egri,

Touchstone.  ISBN: 0671213326

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

Publisher: Kitchen Sink Press; ISBN: 006097625X; Reprint edition (May 1994)

Brecht on Theater by Bertolt Brecht

Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub; ISBN: 0809005425; Reissue edition (September 1994)

Way of the Storyteller by Ruth Sawyer

Penguin: 0140044361

Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling

New Rider 0321278909

RECOMMENDED:

By Means of Performance : Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual

by Richard Schechner ISBN: 0521339154

First Person : New Media as Story, Performance, and Game

by Noah Wardrip-Fruin. MIT Press: 0262232324

Quintessence of Ibsenism, GB Shaw

Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach

publisher: Writers Digtest: ISBN: 1884910475

Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting

by Robert McKee. Publisher: Regan Books. ISBN: 0060391685

Open Source Democracy by Douglas Rushkoff

Demos(UK): 1841801135