Dramatic Presence in Improvised Stories

We investigate how to achieve a sense of dramatic presence (the perception of being “in” a story, playing the role of one of its characters), with the aim of building systems that can offer the same. Improvisational theatre might serve as a model for this experience, where there is no guiding plot; each of its actors shares responsibility for the collaborative emergence of a story. We describe an experiment in which improv actors attempt to evoke a feeling of dramatic presence for participants who have no improv experience, to find out how we can characterize this experience, and how the improv actors might achieve it. We conclude that the experiment was enjoyable for participants not only because they felt dramatically present, but also because they partook in the collaborative and creative process that generated the drama.