storyeum: a historical experience

"It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education and entertainment." - Herbert Marshall McLuhan.

While I was sitting in the Storyeum lobby on a wooden bench, my eyes drifted over to a wall that had a Marshall McLuhan quote writ large across it. "Oh shit..." I thought to myself, "Not McLuhan." It was a troubling start to my 72 minute adventure through BC's magical history, the $16.5 million mega-tourist project located just a few blocks from my office in Gastown.

Troubling in that many individuals and companies that have chosen to reference the late Canadian communications scholar and pop-culture guru, often do so in order to look intellectual or deep or edgy or more-clever-than-you or all of the above. Indeed, McLuhan is oft quoted for his wonderful taglines and pithy quotes (medium is the message, global village, etc.). But perhaps it was fitting that Historical Experiences, the parent company of Storyeum, chose McLuhan as their inspiration, their patron saint -- someone who asked more questions than he answered and whose confusing and so often paradoxical material is still so popular and seemingly relevant close to 50 years after he produced it.

Indeed, I was left with a great many questions after leaving Storyeum. Far more questions than answers. And whether that was the intent of the designers of this experience, the actors in the vignettes, and the staff, it's hard to say. But it gave me something to chew on this Sunday afternoon in Vancouver.

Are you experienced?

Storyeum is a theatrical presentation of British Columbia's dramatic history. Descend in one of the world's largest passenger lifts and take a 72 minute guided tour through a series of unique underground theatres. Witness historical moments, meet memorable characters and learn legends and stories of the past.

Come for the history. Come for the fun of it.

(from the Storyeum website)


So just what is Storyeum? It's called a variety of things, both by its inventors and by reviewers: an educational experience, a tourist attraction, a theatrical presentation, and a history of BC. Looking as though it were taken directly from the pages of the 1999 Pine & Gilmore book The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage, Storyeum falls into a new category of consumer spending: an experience. While once upon a time we had goods and services, we now have goods, services, and experiences:

The newly identified offering of experiences occurs whenever a company intentionally uses services as the stage and goods as props to engage an individual. While commodities are fungible, goods tangible, and services intangible, experiences are memorable. (p. 12, Experience Economy).

The archetypal experience that most of us are familiar with is Disneyland, the original theme park. Some other more recent and local experiences that Vancouverites may be familiar with include the now (interesting to note) extinct Planet Hollywood and Rainforest Cafe dining experiences. Storyeum is a historical experience, one that uses history as its foundation for providing its customers (called "guests" in experience economy talk) value.

And before we get into the guts of Storyeum's particular experience, it is worthwhile to take a few more concepts from the pages of Experience Economy to understand just what is going on down at Water St. On page 30 of the book, authors Joseph Pine and James Gilmore setup a figure entitled "The Experience Realms", which I will replicate here in:



(Figure 2.1, p. 30, Experience Economy)

The authors state that there are two dimensions on which experiences can be considered. One is the active/passive continuum, the other is the absorption/immersion continuum. Active/passive is easy to understand -- this has to do with your role in the experience. Going out and kayaking is far more active than sitting at home watching a TV program about kayaking.

The absorption/immersion one has more to do with the "fidelity" of the experience, in my understanding of the concept. Watching Lord of the Rings on video at home is going to be less immersive than seeing it at the local superplex movie theatre on the big screen with big THX sound. So even though the content may be the same, the way in which its delivered has an impact on the experience.

These two dimensions combined provide you with your four quadrants of experiences (what good business consultant doesn't just love these kind of diagrams -- admit it, you love them), entertainment/esthetic on the passive side and educational/esthetic on the active side.

Edutainment

Where does Storyeum fit in this dimensional analysis of experiences? Well, the 72 minute tour consists of basically 7 pieces of theatre vignettes sandwiched with two multimedia slideshows experienced in two rather large elevators. Guests are guided through 7 specific sets, each with their own story, representing a different part of BC's history. The elevator rides and vignettes each have a title and a loose theme: In the Beginning (pre-history), Ancient Trails (pre-history first-nations), First People (first-nations at settlement), The Long Hall (empire history), New Arrivals (colonial history), Barkerville (expansionist history), Confederation (national history), Building a Nation (capitalist history), and finally Passages (modern history?).

The crux of the experience is the theatrical content. For all of the theory presented above, this is basically a walking tour of a big set with 7 small vignettes or plays or skits, each lasting about 10 minutes or slightly less. It's theatre, presented outside of the usual confines of the usual playhouse setting.

How does it rate on the active/passive scale? Pretty darn passive. It breaks down the fourth wall throughout, acknowledging the "guests" who are watching the actors perform and there's the dreaded "can I have a volunteer" moment, but other than that, you don't utter a word the entire trip through Storyeum's histories. You simply watch, mind your step, and hustle to the next vignette (there's another group behind you after all, so hurry up).

On the absorption/immersive dimension, it's obviously fairly immersive. You're in what appears to me a pre-historical rainforest, or on board a ship off the west coast of Vancouver Island in the midst of a storm. Certainly far more immersive than sitting at home watching TV. But it's not real, of course. You know this. The actors know this. Everyone around you (except for some very small children perhaps) know this. So it goes fairly far on the immersive scale without you actually being in Barkerville.

This "non-realness" seemed to be an issue for me, something I'm still having problems putting my finger on exactly. They're nice sets, don't get me wrong. I was impressed at what they'd done to my regular Gastown parkade -- two years of jackhammering and traffic snarlups on Water St. produced quite the building. But it just didn't quite seem to inspire. Perhaps I simply prefer to spend my time doing things in the "real environment" instead of a simulated version of it. In BC, as well, simulating the great outdoors seems to be setting oneself up for failure, even with some of the great set-building that was apparent at Storyeum.

Pine and Gilmore discuss the real vs. fake issue in Experience Economy:

"To stage compelling esthetic experiences, designers must acknowledge that any environment designed to create an experience is not real (the Rainforest Cafe, for instance, is not the rain forest). They should not try to fool their guests into believing it's something it is not." (p. 37, Experience Economy)

On the page prior, they claim,

"While architects may lead, it really falls to everyone involved in the staging of esthetic experiences to connect individuals and the (immersive) reality they directly (albeit passively) experience, even when the environment seems less than 'real'." (p.36 , Experience Economy).

And so we come to the stories and the actors. These historical vignettes are exactly that: vignettes. It's hard to cram 20,000 years of BC history into 72 minutes. Lots of the dialogue and narrative hints at much larger things, but never really gets into the content. As such, it's pretty light on the educational side, other than giving the guest (by now I'm assuming the target customer is the cruise-ship passenger or tour-bus tourist, not the average Vancouver resident, although perhaps I'm totally off-base there and I just don't fit nicely into the intended market demographic for this attraction), a Coles-notes version of BC history. It ultimately suffers from the 6:00 news syndrome -- where the total information conveyed to the audience during the evening news winds up being less than one page of newspaper text. It's simply light on the content.

It's hard for me not to do a mental comparison with the only other experience I've had with BC history that reminds of me Storyeum: the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. I remember the galleries of artifacts and small glass-enclosed items of historical importance. But more than that, I remember being a child and walking through the old-town section, across creaky boards, or aboard Captain George Vancouver's HMS Discovery. It's been a few years since I was last there, but I have a special place for the RBCM in my heart and I'd guess that lots of other BC born and raised individuals do as well.

But what Storyeum has and the RBCM doesn't (narrative elements, actors, theatrical vignettes), the RBCM makes up for in its possibilities, its lack of constraints. The information flow or user path (as we'd call it building software) inside the RBCM allows for many paths through the material and the history. It accommodates the different kind of Museum-goers, from the strollers to the seekers. Storyeum is purpose-built: in and out, one path, 72 minutes. Browse in the lobby on the way in, browse in the giftshop on the way out, thanks for coming.

Fair enough -- Storyeum doesn't claim to be the RBCM. It's a historical experience, not a museum. It's more entertainment that education. And it seems as though the literature, or at least the Experience Economy, would say this is a good thing. On page 40, while discussing the American Wilderness Experience, they state "signs provide short descriptions of each species of animal on display, but this quickly begets museum-like monotony."

Boring is not a good experience. Later on the next few pages the same authors give the example of "birthday party experiences" at Club Disney where the opening of gifts is banned (you can do that at home) as "the act of one child opening gifts before his playmates simply lacks experiential richness across the four realms [entertainment, education, esthetic, escapist - GR] (ask any five year old if he enjoys watching friends open gifts), and so Club Disney instead places all the presents in a take-home bag for opening back at the birthday family's house." (p 42, Experience Economy). This of course begs the question, what kind of people are we creating who only consume experiences that are not boring? Is there no room for the authentic, the sincere, the awkward, the uncomfortable, the reflective, or the boring? Will people eventually need to hire specialists in providing "authentic boring experiences" for those of us who have forgotten what it's like to be bored?

Back to the future

And so we return to the big quote on the wall from Marshall McLuhan. There's no difference between education and entertainment. What does it mean to have that printed on the wall and on the back of your admission ticket, firmly above the legal disclaimer and terms and conditions? Seen prior to the tour, I felt as though it was an expectation setting device, used to lower my expectations on how much educational content I was about to receive. Because I normally equate mass entertainment with low educational content. In that light, it seemed to be a cover-your-ass statement, a cop out, instead of something inspirational or particularly intellectual.

McLuhan's quote comes from his essay Classroom Without Walls, written in 1960. He was discussing the introduction of TV and film media into the classroom, diminishing the role that books and print media had played. A scholar of dominant forms of media and their effects, McLuhan, only a few paragraphs before his rhetorical flourish about entertainment and education writes,

"These new developments [film, TV, etc.] , under quiet analytic survey, point to a basic strategy of culture for the classroom. When the printed book first appeared, it threatened the oral procedures of teaching and created the classroom as we now know it. Instead of making his own text, his own dictionary, his own grammar, the student started out with these tools. He could study not one but several languages. Today these new media threaten, instead merely reinforce, the procedures of this traditional classroom. It's customary to answer this threat with denunciations of the unfortunate character and effect of movies and TV, just as the comic book was feared and scorned and rejected from the classroom. Its good and bad features in form and content, when carefully set beside other kinds of art and narrative, could have become a major asset to the teacher."

Note the contrarian McLuhan. I'm sure this kind of writing in its time (1960) was quite the wakeup call for educators of the day. TV, movies, and comic books in the classroom? You've got to be kidding me!

He continues,

Where student interest is already focused is the natural point at which to be in the elucidation of other problems and interests. The educational task is not only to provide basic tools of perception but also to develop judgment and discrimination with ordinary social experience.

Few students ever acquire skill in analysis of newspapers. Fewer have any ability to discuss a movie intelligently. To be articulate and discriminating about ordinary affairs and information is the mark of an educated man. It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education and entertainment. This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking into the matter. It's like setting up a distinction between didactic and lyric poetry on the ground that one teaches, the other pleases. However, it's always been true that whatever pleases teaches more effectively. (McLuhan, "Classroom Without Walls" - italics mine)

Looking into the matter. McLuhan was famous for his "probes" -- his rhetorical analysis of media. His statement about education and entertainment was exactly that -- something to get people going, to discuss, to talk about what it meant. Taken in context, it sounds a bit different than the bold statement that greeted me this afternoon.

Will Storyeum provide a starting point for visitors and residents alike to further investigate BC's history? Who knows -- I'm not sure how many people wanted to know more about the building of the railroad or the history of BC's first nations people when they left today. If you quizzed me on BC history after I left Storyeum and asked me what I learned today, could I provide you with any answers? Probably not -- I'm not sure there was anything that I learned today I hadn't already picked up in high-school. There was one part about how decaying salmon bits made way for trees growing throughout the province... I was a bit unclear on the science of that part of the presentation, foiled by the vague narrative and inability to ask questions about the content. Did it do its job in entertaining me for over an hour? Sure. Was it worth $22? Maybe -- the same as a movie ticket and a popcorn, drink, and chocolate bar combo. If there's only destination for a "must-see" history of BC that tourists should be exposed to when they arrive here? I don't think so -- I'd probably send people to Victoria or even the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, as boring an monotonous as they may be.

Is it a responsible (accurate/representative) history of BC? I know the Storyeum people went to great lengths to consult with first nations groups and historians to put together the material. And it does deal with topics like the loss of Chinese lives in the building of the railroads or the devastation of smallpox on the first nations people -- so while it's overly optimistic in its tone, it doesn't avoid some of those less-than-happy issues in BC's past.

Should entertainment care? Or rather, should we care if entertainment provides us with responsible histories and experiences? This is a bigger question, that perhaps needs some more thought. If entertainment and education are the same thing, perhaps not so much. As long as you had a good time and felt that you received value for your money, what more can you ask for?