my paper: FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE
Your Turn: playing board games on the radio
Canadians are hungry for the interactive experience. No longer satisfied with passively watching characters and situations develop onstage, in movies or on TV, we demand participation. We dial in by the millions to vote for idols, idiots and fifty tracks. We yell out suggestions from the crowd. We watch for tongue-in-cheek references to current events. Anything that can connect our quotidian lives with the performance presented by the media. Yet theatre – the art form that has the potential to be most interactive, the medium that draws audience and performers together into a shared experience – is suffering from falling attendance and stagnant imaginations. It just isn’t fun anymore.
As a freelance theatre maker, I have recently extended my practice into radio in an attempt to cultivate interactivity and fun over the airwaves. Seeking an immediate interface with the audience and a shared, real-time experience, I founded North by Northwest Games Day with host and producer Sheryl Mackay. North by Northwest is aired across British Columbia from 6:00 – 9:00 a.m. Saturday and Sunday mornings on CBC Radio One. Using the familiar medium of board games, Sheryl and I created an interactive site for play that reaches out across the province. On Games Day, listeners call in to play games like Scrabble and Password, jamming the switchboards and connecting across kilometers.
In this paper I will discuss the inspiration for Games Day, the technical mechanics of playing both games, the strengths and weakness of each event and plans for the future of the endeavor.
(continued in COMMENTS section)
posted by awo @ 10/30/2005 12:16:00 PM
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On Your Mark: getting ready to play
The impulse for starting Games Day on North by Northwest comes from the same instinct that suspects the presenting of this paper will be more fun than the reading (or writing) of it. After working as a freelancer at CBC Radio Vancouver for 4 years, I had grown impatient with the extreme level of “packaging” that happens before anything hits the air. One of the attractions about broadcasting for me has been its apparent immediateness. There have been some amazing moments recently and in the history of broadcasting: Herb Morrison’s by now endlessly parodied exclamation “oh the humanity” as the Hindenburg’s passengers leapt to their deaths and the blimp slowly crashed and exploded; the suspended of activity in Joey Tomato’s Kitchen as staff and patrons alike held our breath for ten seconds as Donovan Baily ran his way to gold in the 2002 Summer Olympics; Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” that had parents scrambling to cover their children’s eyes across North America; and more fictitiously, the panic stirred by Orson Welles’ first broadcast of H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds. Yet most radio programs on CBC are prepared the day, if not weeks, before. And like most theatre, they make no mention of this preparation, instead going to air projecting the impression that everything is happening right now.
The notable exceptions to the prepared “live” radio include the news, morning shows, afternoon shows, traffic reports, weather and the “check in” programs. By now, every one must be familiar with Rex Murphy’s gruff rambles and incisive hosting on Cross Canada Check-Up, and in British Columbia we have Mark Forsyth’s week-daily BC Almanac. But frankly, these shows are no fun. Sure they galvanize listeners across distances and stimulate important conversations, but these programs are still mainly informational. Can’t we use this powerful tool of communication to connect over kilometers in a forum that doesn’t revolve around politics or tragedy. Can’t we just have a good time?
Games Day comes from a desire to create a shared, present event that capitalizes on the volume of radio listeners to create many opportunities for engagement and, to quote my colleague and friend Marcus Youssef, “thoughtful fun.”
Scrabble: holding people up across the province
The first foray into Games Day was scheduled for the second Sunday after New Year’s Day. Sheryl and I had initially planned to indulge in a New Year’s tradition: filling out the Globe and Mail’s full-page crossword puzzle. This, we thought, is a cooperative activity that will require an injection of brainpower from many people. “And if all else fails, we’ll just play Scrabble,” we decided. The broadcast was planned as a multi-media event – complementing the live, on air interaction with a simul-web-cast where listeners could track our progress online at the North by Northwest website. But as happens so frequently with technology-based plans, there was a glitch: the website was inaccessible and the CBC webmaster away for the Holidays. All else did fail, and we played Scrabble.
I arrived at Studio 31 at 6:30 AM on the morning on January 9th, chilly, sleepy and fortified with two cans of Red Bull. Sheryl brought a Scrabble board from home. Just before the 7:00 news we introduced the game, mixed the tiles, determined playing order and drew letters for the players: Sheryl, myself and the Province of BC. Almost immediately after we read the letters out over the airwaves the phones started ringing.
They didn’t stop ringing for two hours.
As Sheryl fielded the phones I tended the board, trying my best to describe the layout and intersecting words over the air as well as attempting to hold up my end of the game. Within half an hour of starting Sheryl and I combined our hands, forfeiting a player in favour of the challenging task of manning the phones. It became clear early on that the listeners were going to win.
As they called with their suggestions we added up the possible scores and used the word suggestion that generated the highest score. My words were quickly composed between callers and never scored over 10 points or broke into two syllables. But we had never intended to measure the success of this game by the scoreboard, rather we were interested in seeing just how many people would be willing to participate. By this criteria, the game was far more successful then we had anticipated.
When The World This Weekend hit the air at 9:00 AM, Sheryl and I were exhausted, but elated with the success of the project. Within two hours more than 20 listeners from across the province got through the busy switchboard to offer word suggestions, stories and helpful advice. Lois called from the Kootenays where she was on her way to ski patrol and then again to inform us that our game had made her late. John called to “clean up the board” with the one-two punch of xi and xu (“two words that every Scrabble player should know”) and told us how he had played with his mother every day for twenty years – they had worn the painted letters off the tiles and had had to refresh them by hand. Victor called from Pender Island where the power was out, leaving him the solave of the wood stove and a transistor radio. Caroline called from Vancouver Island to correct my math. And my sister called from Fort St. John and broke the one syllable barrier. “I would’ve helped you, but you didn’t tell me what your letters were…”
As we sipped coffee in the control room, Sheryl and I quickly debriefed about the event. Doing it again was not even in question, all we had to decide was when.
Password: “more specific than ‘pine?’”
The second Games Day took place on Saturday March 19th. Sheryl and I wanted to build on the success of Scrabble, and introduce some new elements that exploited the technical requirements of live hosting and the radio studio. With a vision of this initiative becoming a recurring event, we also wanted to experiment with other games, confident that we could return to Scrabble if a new idea failed.
We called our new game “Password,” even though we chose to not adhere to the rules familiar to viewers of the television version of the game. The rules were closer to what many would call “Celebrities.” Prior to arriving in the studio I had collected BC-specific clues (people, places and things). We also invited two guests into the studio: Amiel Gladstone and Maiko Bae Yamamoto. With two guests in the studio, we then split the province in half along the 53rd parallel. (This isn’t the geographic centre of the province, but we chose to position the dividing line here to make up for the fact that Southern BC has a denser population than Northern BC.) We flipped a coin to determine which guest would represent which half of the province and then invited listeners to call in. Again manning the phone-lines, Sheryl (who was in the Control Room) determined where Callers were from, which in turn determined which side they were playing for. And then Sheryl gave them three Clue-Words. The callers’ objective was to get their in-studio teammate to say the Clue-Word without using it themselves – all this within a sixty-second time limit. To add to the fun, we asked the in-studio teammate to enter the “sound-proof booth” – which in reality just meant they removed their headphones rendering them deaf as Sheryl announced the clues over the air for everyone else in the province and the studio to hear.
After each team had taken a turn with this Caller-driven format, we switched to the Lightning Round where the in-studio guest attempted to get the caller to guess as many clues as possible in one minute. Points were tallied for each correct answer and we played two rounds: one from 7:00 – 7:30 and the other from 8:00 – 8:30.
Password shared more elements with theatre than Scrabble did. It was initially set up as more competitive than the cooperative version of Scrabble we had orchestrated. The result: conflict. The gap opened by the challenge of guessing specific species of pine trees and esoteric trivia forced caller and guest alike to find strategies to communicate effectively – much as an actor does in a rehearsed performance. Finally, the time limits and intra-provincial rivalry served to raise the stakes. The dramatic nature of Password resulted in more laughter than the literary Scrabble. The teamwork and communication between caller and guest – strangers to each other – was engaging and fun. The BC specific clues served the mandate of the show and provided a degree of difficulty that was unforeseen. One doesn’t realize how little one knows about the province until faced with the need to know.
Requiring only four callers to participate over the two rounds, Password did not elicit the same amount of participation from the listeners a Scrabble did. We had to bend the geographic rules to find players in both rounds. In Round One, Jim was on the Queen of Coquitlam ferry, sailing southward – and possibly crossing the 53rd parallel – but as he hailed from Prince George we kept him on Team North. (Incidentally, Jim had to keep calling back as he traveled in and out of cell phone range on the ferry.) In the second round Sally from Kelowna was asked to represent on Team North because no other callers from outside the Lower Mainland successfully got through on the phone lines.
Balancing the lower rate of participation from callers with the increase of laughter in the studio, Password satisfied our ambitions. The format helped to inform the direction for the next round of North by Northwest Games Day.
Next Time: future rounds of Games Day
Listening back on the archives of the two Games Day programmes I have clear ideas of where to proceed next. I would like to return to the Scrabble format, but instead of pitting the CBC personalities against the Listeners, I would position the studio staff as moderators who facilitate an inter-province game. Ultimately I would like to see this game expand to a version that would see smaller regions (The Cariboo / The Kootenays / The Peace / etc…) play against each other in a round robin tournament that would stretch over six or eight weeks. Playing in this way will require a series of short, prepared segments or music during which we can field calls and arrange plays on the board.
What is most interesting to me as an after-the-fact listener is the interaction between the callers and the people in the studio. Future incarnations of Games Day will build in more space for interaction – or “mini-interviews” – with listeners who call in to participate. Of course, this depends on the personality type of the individual who calls in and requires sensitivity on the part of the hosts.
Finally, I would like to experiment with other forms of parlour games. I imagine that Charades, while challenging, could be fun. One of my radio idols, Jonathan Goldstein, has already played a short game on his program Wire Tap. But again, his program is prepared in advance and we would be operating in the void of present action, totally dependent on the skill of our guests to describe their physical gestures and actions, the clarity of the telephone lines and the ability of the callers to interpret the verbal cues. Certainly as we continue to play a variety of games on the air the format and mechanics will evolve to address different challenges and curiosities.
As a listening experience, Password is more self-contained and more dramatic radio event. As a site for interaction between the studio and listeners across the province it is less successful, simply because there are less opportunities to participate. On the other hand, Scrabble conjures a sense of gathering together around a giant kitchen table. I appreciated the cooperative spirit and space of exchange that we generated. We also received a greater volume of calls for Scrabble, which could indicate that it was more accessible to audience members. However this observation could be skewed by the fact that we had fewer callers on the line for longer periods of time during Password.
Final Round
Perhaps what fuels my interest most about Games Day is that it requires little or no preparation, that it happens in real time, and that it is fun. In this way it is more like life and living than theatre. The conceits and requirements of the medium are not hidden; rather they are exposed and exploited as ways of making the games more challenging, and therefore more fun. The audience does not become the performers because there is no performance. Instead we are all doing something together. We are a community.
It is this sense of community, of interactivity, that fuels the current appetite for “real life television.” Games Day acknowledges what already exists: a community of listeners spread across the province of British Columbia. But our initiative takes the community a step forward. By sharing a game together we build links between individuals, drawing attention to and strengthening the extant network in a way that is accessible and, most importantly, fun.
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