Because [[hypertextuality]] is central to [[my practice]], I'd like to [[lead a Jam]] about [[Twine.]]
(if: (history:) contains "lead a Jam" and "hypertextuality" and "my practice" and "Twine.")[[Okay, that's everything I have to say!]]I'm not sure hypertextuality is the right word for what I mean to say about my work. I mean, what I'm trying to say, is that it's networked, on every level. That every play comes out of an eclectic pile of sources and influences, a mosaic of ideas arranged by me to become a new image. I've always been drawn to plays like that: //Mr. Burns, Everybody, Passage, Grimly Handsome,// plays that are at once singularly original and yet seem to vibrate against our world. Outside of plays, I love books like //The Argonauts// or// Station Eleven// or even //Watchmen,// works that have a sense of multiplicity, polyphony, hypertextuality.
I like the word //hypertextuality// because it's related to hypertext (i.e., a link on a website).
[[Kind of like what you're reading right now -- a hypertext.|Passage1]] My practice has lately has expanded from plays to incorporate screenplays, television pilots, musicals (original and adaptations), video games, podcasts... I'm thinking of storytelling a little differently these days. But still, in every version of my work, I am obsessed with hypertext. I can't help it. I believe all work is created in conversation with every work that the artist experiences. I believe art is a product of the culture that produced it. I believe in cheeky little references. I believe in reading the acknowledments section because that's where you see a writer's intellectual lineage, the community they've come from, the work that exists in relation to theirs. I believe in footnotes!
[[But enough about me.|Passage1]]My Jam would involve a brief demonstration of Twine's basic capacities. Then, I would invite each member of the Jam to input a piece of text that is meaningful to them -- it can be something they've written or something they've encountered -- into Twine as a passage.
(A passage in Twine is one screen's worth of text. What you're seeing right now is a passage.)
I'd next invite them to explore opportunities for hypertext, using words or phrases in their text as jumping off points for new passages. In turn, what are the points in those passages that jump off to even more new passages? In turn, do any of those tangents reconnect to others? What unexplored themes and unexpected connections emerge the tangled web of text that results?
A Twine Jam would invite artists to see text in a new way, from a perspective of multiplicity.
[[And also, it's just a cool tool to use.|Passage1]]Twine is the software I used to make this text. Basically, it allows you to create a networked arrangement of text, rather than the linear one you'd create in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or Final Draft. To me, Twine is a better way to capture how I think -- branching off into new directions, annotating everything, pointing out how this connects to that.
It's available for free online and is very, very easy to learn to use (in fact, I just taught a class with Twine for the Playwrights Center/Augsburg University). Twine is primarily used to make text-based video games (like the work of Charity Heartscape Porpentine, one of my artistic heroes), and it does have some powerful capabilities I'm not showcasing here, but my Jam would focus on the basics.
[[Oh, and to clarify, it requires no coding knowledge. Phew! |Passage1]]Thanks for reading that! You can exit this browser now.
-Lex