The unexplored frontiers of this revolution are a siren call to the experimental instinct of storytellers, the communications instinct of activists and community builders, and the “gold rush” instinct of business people wanting to find the Next Big Thing.

Right now, the revolution is in storytelling. Read this example from Wired before you read further.

You might not realise it, but you’ve already experienced stories told this way. It’s been argued that George Lucas was the first storyteller of this kind, with Star Wars merchandising stretching the films and characters far beyond their original narrative. For a modern update, fans around the world are now waiting for JK Rowling’s immersive website Pottermore.

Some reasons why you should take note of this new movement:

• Last year, visionary director Guillermo Del Toro and his creative partners formed Mirada, a production studio that handles everything from concept to post production and calls itself “a storytelling engine in the form of a company – an imaginarium, where we are free to explore”.

• The Passion of Christ, by the National Theatre Wales and starring Michael Sheen, caused a stir in April.   The immersive approach mobilised the community of Port Talbot into participating the story in a way that is very rarely seen, whilst the project got a lot of column inches in the national press.

• Earlier this year, legendary plastic couple “Barbie and Ken” began to play out their love story on the social media stage. Barbie left Ken for a surfer seven years ago, and after a long and involved love story that played out over media from Twitter to Billboards, fans voted to reunite the plastic people on Valentines day this year.

• As far back as 2009, Hollywood trade mag Variety identified transmedia storytelling as the “future of the biz”.

• In April 2010 the Producer’s Guild of America (PGA) recognised the credit of “Transmedia Producer”.

• Tim Kring, creator of hit television show Heroes, developed Conspiracy for Good in collaboration with Nokia. This was a game that took place across the internet and mobile over four weeks, culminating in a live action event in London and raising money for charity in the real world.

• London-based company Mind Candy ran a puzzle based game called Perplex City, which offered cash prizes to the people who could locate a precious artifact from a fictional city which had apparently been hidden somewhere on earth. The game also involved playing cards which were sold to players, an example of a viable revenue model for this form of storytelling.

• In 2007, renowned industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails sent out a series of interlinked clues which fans followed to reveal supplementary words and images linked to the band’s album and tour.

You’ll notice in these examples that large scale immersive games  can take on the quality of stories, whilst straight narratives begin to use game mechanics to keep their audience participative and engaged.

But this is only the start…

If you are a writer, Portal Entertainment is hosting an Immersive Writing Lab in August with a £6k development fund for the writers of tomorrow. The festival aims to help writers explore new forms of storytelling and you can find out more here. Tickets to the Immersive Writing Lab cost a tiny £20 if you book early!

What are your influences?

Because I work in so many different media, I draw influences from all over the place. Charlie Kaufman, Powell & Pressburger, 42 Entertainment (and all who sailed in her), Artichoke, Naomi Alderman, Six to Start, Graham Greene, Philip Pullman, Joss Whedon, Raymond Chandler, Pixar, Simon Stevens, Lee Hall, 1980’s text adventures, Punchdrunk and Kneehigh Theatre, Martin Elricsson…. If any of these names are unfamiliar, look them up. They’re all great.

What was your journey to working cross-media?

I studied English at university, made shorts and wrote poetry. Then I came to London and wrote light entertainment (anything from magic shows to musicals) for a holiday entertainment company. I worked as a copywriter, writing in many different voices for many different companies. I wrote plays. I wrote screenplays. I wrote radio plays.
And then I saw an ad in the Guardian written entirely in code. Unscrambled, it was an open call to writers, designers and creative types to work on an international murder mystery treasure hunt. It was called Perplex City. I started as an in-house writer and took on more and more production duties. For nearly two years, I worked on this huge cross-media game creating a fictional world using audio drama and live events, fictional websites, videos, puzzles, songs, maps, text messages, board games, and just about every medium you can think of. My diverse career finally came together. It felt like I’d unwittingly trained myself for this new, peculiar job.

What’s great about diversifying as much as you have?

I’m never going to get bored. Technology is creating new media to tell stories with, but more importantly, there are very few conventions in cross-media storytelling yet – there’s no formula to follow, no reason to do the same thing twice. And though my time is mostly taken up with these cross-media projects, I get to indulge in ‘single-media’ projects too. I’m working on a play for Radio 4 right now.

What’s not great about it?

Cross-media stories have a fairly limited audience at the moment. The technology is still a barrier to a lot of people, so those who play along are mainly the most tech-savvy. As a result, I don’t think the audience is large enough or diverse enough to accommodate a wide range of genres – yet. As the audience grows and matures, we’ll have the chance to tell a bigger range of stories.

Other things that aren’t great: explaining to my mother what I do for a living; struggling to find time to write and not just organize; and dealing with lawyers.

What are your directions for the future; where are you going next?

I’m producing another global game to be launched next year. I think it could get noticed by a more mainstream audience and help make cross-media entertainment truly popular. That’s the aim, anyway. I want everyone to join in.

Well to start with there’s a lot of speculation still, particularly in regards to the likes of the South Bank Show, which Stellar has heard will be fine. But from digesting as much of the news as we possible can, it seems most of the hard hits have come to the Yorkshire, Leeds, studio where a fair bit of drama is shot. It also seems likely that the Cory-nobs Manchester studio will close and production will move to the new Media City in Salford Quays – but that doesn’t open until 2011 so we shall see. The best coverage can be found on the Guardian, which also has some comment from ITV employees.

Please do let us know if you have more information you can share with fellow members. And perhaps now is a good time to get your application in to Stellar’s Pitch event

Hosted by Stella Duffy

Devoted and Disgruntled is an opportunity to meet up with artists, arts professionals, and audiences. The next three D&Ds will have a different theme and guest host. November’s D&D will be hosted by Stella Duffy, an Associate Artist of Improbable. As always the response to this theme, and the conversations we have, will be decided by you at the start of the evening.

Do gender and sexuality still matter – and if they do, what do we do with them?

Dear All
I am a woman. I am gay/queer/lesbian – and far happier with any of those terms as adjectives, than as necessarily-limiting nouns. I write, perform, direct, make theatre and other work. None of those things solely define me, nor would I want them to, yet as artists, what we do comes from ourselves, our own lives, those we meet, and the worlds – real and imagined – we inhabit. We make work by and of ourselves. How important then, are gender and sexuality to what we do?
In twenty-five years making work I have seen our women’s and gay/queer theatre companies virtually disappear. This doesn’t matter if all the issues we once thought so vital have been taken up by newer artists less concerned with drawing lines and/or with speaking from and for the ghetto. It doesn’t matter if the issues of gender and sexuality – so prevalent, for example, in the classics – are investigated in current work. Nor does it matter if we now truly do have a level playing field from which to make our work.
And yet … I still hear more women than men decrying childcare provision in our work/places. We still have many more men directors than women, and a glance at any listings magazine will show men writers in (at best) a 2:1 ratio to women. Gay men may be in the public eye in unprecedented numbers, but where is the work by young women about their sexuality? Why is it now deemed empowering for women to get their kit off in the rise of modern burlesque – and if those women are still subject to the male gaze, whose empowerment is it anyway? (And are there any straight men empowering themselves by getting naked too?)
Maybe it is all sorted. Maybe there are no women thinking there’s still a glass ceiling, no queer people believing they rarely see themselves represented on our stages, no heterosexual men hemmed in by a society forcing them into a patriarchy they would rather reject, no straight people pushed into playing boy/girl games they hoped stopped in the 1950’s …
Or maybe we can have an Open Space about it, ask if we have arrived at a stage where gender and sexuality are truly fluid, or truly irrelevant – or both. And anyway, as was mooted at the very first D&D, didn’t we all come into theatre in the first place because we thought it was sexy, because we were seventeen-year-olds hoping to get laid? (While we changed the world, obviously.)
Stella Duffy, October 2008

DETAILS:
The evening runs using Open Space technology which gives anyone the chance to propose a starting point for discussion, then take part in one of these conversations, flit between them all, or head to the bar.
To get into Shunt for free, let them know on the door that you’re there for D&D. No need to book, just turn up on the night.
Shunt is on Joiner Street, a little alley inside London Bridge tube station. Find a map at:http://www.shunt.co.uk/map.php
For further information or to discuss access requirements get in touch with Lucy at lucy@improbable.co.uk or at the office on 0207 240 4556.
Hope to see you there.
www.improbable.co.uk