If Doing Things with Novels course taught me anything, readers will find the best way to consume amazing stories. One of my favorites that has been told in different ways is Authur Miller’s 1953 play, The Crucible. This tale inspired by the Salem witch trials is the perfect balance of drama and intrigue that would be great to experience through the storytelling application Episodes.
Created in 2013, the storytelling platform comprises over eighty professionals working in technology, television, publishing, and games. Along with community writers, the mobile application allows users to be immersive in engrossing and highly dramatic stories. The consumers play multiple roles here: producers: as they have the ability to contribute stories and plotlines, users: as they interact with the application, and readers: as they peruse through the story presented. The stories have images and text, and they are presented almost as text messages conversations. Users/readers can either read through the juicy drama or partake in action and choose what happens next.
Being a tale full of intrigue, mystery, tension, and drama, The Crucible seems to be the perfect story for this medium. The play has many memorable characters and plotlines that can be recreated on this application. This exercise also can be a possible pedagogical tool that can engage students in reading the original material. The application is already accessible through both IOS and Android application stores. The interface is easy to navigate, especially for those with experience choosing your own adventure or the SIMS game.
Through my retelling called Witches at Play, I’ll bring Abigail, John, Tibuta, Ann, and many other memorable characters to this modern way to interact and retell a classic. As a creative, I’m excited to use this modern platform to create a choose-your-own-adventure story. As an educator, I’m even more excited to see how can Episodes assist in teaching language, storytelling, world, and character-building but also overall understanding of the major plotlines, themes, and motifs in The Crucible.
Work Cited (in progress):
“Episode Interactive.” Episode, Warner Bros, 2013, home.episodeinteractive.com/about.
Miller, Authur. The Crucible. Penguin Books, 1976.
Class readings:
What we Think About When we Talk about Books – Leah Price
Playable Media and Textual Instruments – Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Persuasive Games – BogostIan Wright Will
This sounds great, though I’m a bit foggy on the details. If I’m understanding you, you’ll transpose a play, THE CRUCIBLE, into a rather “playable” media space in which you will create a new version of the original and encourage a users among the existing user base of the platform to interact with it and perhaps add to it. Does that sound right?
I’d like you to include a reflective piece–let’s say 1000 words or so: blog post length–in which you analyze the object. I think Bolter and Grusin’s work on “remediation” will be very helpful here, since you are in effect “remediating” a play as a very different multimodal object here: Remediation: Understanding New Media by J. David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin.
Excited!