Subject: Next Exit

Joe Lambert: How are we differentiating the concept of digital storytelling from the more general idea of multimedia?

Dana Atchley: By putting the word storytelling in there, you shape the brand. Storytelling is the key ingredient. We are telling a stories. Stories means many of things to different of people. You and I have been talking about the anecdotal nature of conversation, the use of stories in informal presentations. Conversational storytelling is the kind of storytelling most of us are comfortable with and understand. When we refer to digital, we are talking about a utility...a tool. We have been given a new set of tools to create and share our stories. The tools are extremely diverse: There are the software, the hardware used, and the actual publishing and dissemination media.

JL: Do you think we are also talking about integrity? I believe we use digital storytelling in the same way the film community uses independent film. Independent has come to mean more than "outside of the studio system." It is work in which the director's or screenwriter's narrative voice is sustained. Similarly, in a culture where digital becomes synonymous with special effects and the generic narratives of games, we use storytelling to ground the use of digital tools in the search for meaning.

DA: I wouldn't try to overdefine digital storytelling because it can be inclusive of many different kinds of work. I think you and I are most compelled by work that shares honesty an integrity, and has an emotional basis for its message.

JL: Next Exit is an inspiration for many people. What makes Next Exit effective?

DA: First of all, it is honest and emotionally resonant. Secondly, Next Exit has a pool of 60 stories from which I can draw. Each story stands on its own, but they also interconnect and combine in numerous ways. Next Exit is set in an engaging framework. I think people love seeing the campfire. It suggests the shared participation of all the observers. Every storyteller should start with something like that, something that establishes your relationship to the audience in a evocative way.

JL: In storytelling, as distinct from theater or public speaking, the storyteller necessarily establishes the basis of conversation with the audience.

DA: That's breaking the fourth wall.

JL: Exactly. I think the storytelling art, as distinct from theater, is everyone being present, even as they allow themselves to be immersed in story. And this aspect of storytelling is a very good metaphor for critical presentation, as opposed to entertainment. Because if everyone is being only swept away by story, they will not remember the differentiation of material that a presenter is counting on their audience to leave the experience remembering. And finally, it's the obvious thing that the audience has the opportunity to change, either by being unresponsive or by injecting their own voice, ideas, requests into the process.

DA: That's true in theater and in storytelling. I can do the same show every night but it won't be the same experience. The best metaphor for my stories is that they are songs. Each of these story modules (songs) is well understood. The improvisation is the order in which I present each story segment and my lead-in to and exit from each story...that's the jazz part. You have the little licks down that you understand, that are well-rehearsed, and then there is the way you reassemble them on a given evening. You respond to the audience. If you have an audience that is with you, that is responding–especially the ones that surprise you with a reaction to some improvised nugget that you were not expecting–you improve upon the work. I come up with some of my best material during the improvisational part of Next Exit. Just because something happens between me and that particular audience.

JL: Does the audience ask you for favorite stories?

DA: As I have performed the show more often, I've begun to get demands, like a popular singer, for special

pieces, such as, "You have to do the 'Dance of the Flaming Asshole'". Or I have had other surprises, as I recently had in a performance in the South Bay where I was doing my usual overview to the sixties, without telling any particular story, and somebody said, "Hey, who's that guy in the sweater?" The icon was an image of my college mentor, Ray Nash. So I told the story. I wasn't planning to, but somebody in my audience felt comfortable enough to ask and I felt that I could respond. There is something special about that.

JL: Talk to me about how you begin the show and ways of connecting with the audience.

DA: There are other things you can do at the beginning of the show. For example, when my mother tells that story (recounting Dana's packing of a suitcase for a short trip as a young teenager) it absolutely defines my character. I think that's important. Who is this person that's telling a story up there? There are lots of ways to do this, but in my case there is nothing more definitive than that letter my mother wrote. I also think that people relate to story that defines where it all begins, like the story I tell of my grandmother [a tale about the beginning of the Atchley clan in this century]. I think a genesis story is important and is also relevant for businesses, because they have genesis stories to tell. So you have the genesis story, the character story, and then you have the framework for the show. Next Exit can be done in a version with 12 stories in a half-hour or as an hour-and-a-half show. Every one of the stories that I tell in the early part of the show, from the1940s, has something down the road to pay off themes introduced from my youth. The notion of theme and variation, of being able to play out these strings of stories, is all part of a growing story bank.

JL: So there are multiple levels of story that can be set up and then pay off.

DA: Exactly. There can be multiple endings too. The most obvious one, the one I use the most, is the return to Newburyport, where I am turning with my dad and daughters. That story is the an ultimate closer. [One of the stories introduced at the beginning of every show is a sequence of shots showing Dana's father and uncles as young men being marched in front of the camera in new suits and asked to turn in a circle. Baby Dana is introduced in the last sequence. He returns to the same spot 50 years later to perform the same turning sequence.

JL: I think that you coast between the theater and storytelling metaphors, in that you have both a list of stories and an overarching story. Stage storytellers or musical storytellers do not feel that they have to have a throughline, although the best of them usually do create one.

DA: Right, it's like the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper concept album. Part of the challenge for me is how to create an interactive story experience with a middle, a beginning, and an end, but one that will never really be complete until I die? I think we figured it out. There is a completion. I think every show you feel gratified, even though at the end it says, "To Be Continued."

JL: You are simply not presenting data. The story arc has to have closure, it has to start well and end well, in order for it to really work.

DA: I think this is one of the extreme challenges for people who are trying to do interactive working with multiple paths. If I were to put Next Exit on CD, I would appear and act as your guide, and you could wander at will, but have me return to offer suggestions and possible paths. The various attempts in creating interactive film and stories become labyrinthine narratives in which you lose that sense of closure. I think the ancient Greeks got it right. When you take away the traditional story arc, you might as well surf the Internet, because an endless labyrinth exploring people's stories and their links is going to be a much more intriguing interactive experience than the limited branching of a CD ROM story.

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