Story

Andrew Chitty

New forms of drama in which the audience participate in the unfolding narrative have enormous potential for the PSP believes Andrew Chitty, of Illumina Digital. As well as building on the best of television's heritage they will also draw inspiration from contemporary theatre, performance and networked gaming.

Changing the Story

High quality drama and drama-documentary have always been a cornerstone of British Public Sector Broadcasting from Culloden to Edge of Darkness, The Wednesday Play to Shameless, Death of a Princess to Hillsborough and Coronation Street to... Coronation Street. But in the run up to digital switchover the palette of narrative storytelling has dramatically narrowed as schedulers look to increasingly dependable and formatted experiences to bind viewers to their channel brands. Most TV drama consists of long running series in a few dependable genres such as police and medical procedurals. Single films don't make sense as broadcasters cannot marshal their marketing efficiently behind them.

At the same time as TV storytelling is narrowing, the emerging genres of interactive narrative offer huge potential for new forms of storytelling - engaging the user as active participants in unfolding dramatic experiences rather than as passive consumers. We don't yet have the new language to describe these emerging genres but we can already see growing audiences being drawn to a wide range of interactive and event based dramas.

Some of these new narratives are derived from new forms of theatre like NVA's The Storr: Unfolding Landscape or the large scale mixed media productions of Punchdrunk. Others are online in the form of video diaries like Planet Jemma or collaboratively authored fiction like Oldton. Blast Theory's Uncle Roy All Around You, takes the form of an Augmented Reality Game whereas the BBC's Coast Mobile extends a BBC flagship series into the real world with drama and documentary experiences accessible by mobile phone. Perhaps most intriguing are those projects where users have created their own interactive content to extend their experience. When Royal de Luxe delighted a huge audience on the streets of London with the extraordinary The Sultan's Elephant (on flickr) there was no obvious participatory component. But within 24 Hours there were 10,000 tagged images on photo sharing service flickr.

These are the new forms of storytelling that can take forward the fundamental cultural purposes of public service drama - to create unfolding imaginative experiences that examine, reflect and represent contemporary Britain to itself with the active engagement of the audience. These experiences will draw on the traditions of television, theatre, environmental art and gaming but above all they will be participatory.

Participatory narratives break down the distinction between producer and audience which characterises Television and film. In an interactive, networked world, the consumers of the story become users rather than viewers, participants in the unfolding story rather than consumers. This is not entirely new of course, to some practitioners, particularly writers, this marks a return to traditions of great British storytelling and an escape from the straightjacket imposed by broadcasting. But while participatory narratives build on literary and particularly theatrical traditions, the interactive, networked and broadband environment mean they can also be personalised, location sensitive and replayable in that no two experiences of the content are ever exactly the same.

New Forms of Authorship and Experience

The qualities of participatory drama are enabled by the technology, but this is also a writer's medium and writers are amongst those most excited by its potential even though we are talking about a change in the nature of authorship.

The familiar role of the author as a challenging personal voice should be supported by the PSP just as it is being lost in television. Writers and Directors who want to engage with interactive forms should be identified and supported. This doesn't mean losing the sophisticated narrative techniques of television for the sake of 'interactivity at all costs.' Rather we expect those projects guided by personal vision to be particularly important in finding the balance between the delight of surrendering to a narrative and the passion of actively participating.

New media has suggested an alternative form of authorship where the author acts as a guide, a choreographer or even as a gardener, developing a drama with the active contributions of a community of other participants. It is here that the most distinctive experiences enabled by the PSP will emerge. Research with young people shows that content developed through active participation and collaboration has an authenticity they see as lacking in television programmes 'about' a subject. Even some of the content seen on social networking sites such as YouTube bears out the point; simultaneously very personal and emotional and very transient it captures the teenage experience in all its complexity.

Augmented Reality Games (ARGs), some of which are nearest to performance based theatre, are a model for uniquely PSP experiences. In an ARG a real world experience is 'augmented' by content, information or activities delivered via interactive media. This may be on a fixed screen, via the internet or through a mobile device. The user experience is defined by the interaction between the real and the virtual. At present the potential of ARGs is unfulfilled, determined more by the limits of the technology than the subtlety of the storytelling. However, augmenting narrative pageants like The Sultan's Elephant to create a mass experience may soon be possible. Television companies habitually express their interest in these emerging genres but have been less successful at pursuing them or the audiences that are drawn to them. Perhaps they are just too difficult to achieve given the mindset and skills of broadcasting.

The role of the PSP

One of the key roles of the PSP should be to support these experiments in participatory drama, to create new narrative experiences and promote the new voices that will create them. We do not imagine PSP funded drama will be monolithic - it will have a range at least as wide as what we currently experience as television drama. There are many unanswered questions; we need to find out how comedy works in this sector and whether there is an equivalent of a long running series. Even so the PSP should be able to create commissioning criteria that facilitates innovation, participation, quality, audience reach (rather than size), replayability and encouraging new voices and serving new communities.

There may be a special case made for particular genres. Children are digital natives, already they imaginatively borrow, adapt and annotate professionally produced linear content to make it their own. They welcome and expect participation in storytelling. Given this and the current anxieties about UK originated children's content the case for focussing on this audience would seem strong.

The PSP could immediately make its mark by supporting flagship projects representing the different approaches to participatory drama and facing towards diverse audiences. These might include an ARG with broad appeal, a socially engaged drama and at least one children's project. It would also establish a creative R&D Unit to fund smaller projects such as supporting writers to create dramas within existing virtual worlds. On any single project the PSP might act as commissioner and sole funder or in partnership with others. Most importantly the PSP should promote and distribute these projects through relationships with broadcasters, ISPs and sponsors. If it can do this, the PSP will be pump-priming a new and commercially viable sector of the creative economy where the UK has the skills to succeed.