NYTimes.com: There are five possible endings and more than 1,500 routes to get to them in “Choose Your Own Documentary,” one of the 800-plus theater productions at the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which concludes Monday. Inspired by the wildly successful “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, which sold hundreds of millions of copies during the 1980s and 90s, the show allows theatergoers, who are handed a remote-control voting devices on the way to their seats, directly to influence what happens at several moments in the story.
2 comments:
This is actually a really cool idea! I remember reading those Choose-your-own-adventure books when I was younger. I was wondering how it would be feasible with multiple people, but the idea of having it be up to a majority vote is a feasible one. This must have been an interesting piece to write the script for, as writing for things like choose-your-own-adventure books and visual novels is a different, much less linear process.
Theatre festivals like this are great because they get so many people together and they have so many different performances available, but, as the article states, this also creates a huge competition for audiences. I am sure there is a lot of stress placed on the creators of a show to bring audiences in, and this is also difficult for audiences. I know if I went to a festival I would always be worried I was missing out on an amazing show by going to see a merely very good one. I know I probably would not have gone to see the "choose your own documentary" show, as I'm not sure if I like the concept of the electronic group voting, but from this article it seems like I would have missed out. So much depends on the publicity and the image of the show, and this is probably what gets audiences to come see a show, as opposed to its actual quality. While reading reviews is informative, no one is going to read every review for all 2,800 performances.
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