 Hi everybody grab your coffee and breakfast goodies and make your way to your seat because we have a full day and it's time to get started. I'm glad you're here. This morning I'm Kevin Moore the managing director of TCG and I have the great pleasure of talking until everybody's seated. So we met the San Diego host committee last night and one of the coolest things they organize happens tonight. The dine-arounds are a chance to meet and eat with some great San Diego theater people and take in a show or event afterwards. We have dine-arounds heading to Tijuana and to some of the great theater that's on the boards in San Diego right now. So if you've signed up for a dine-around on conference 2.0 you still need to purchase tickets for your event. You can find all of the links on how to do so on 2.0 and at the host committee table by registration outside. So most of you I know are a conference 2.0 pros at this point but for those of you who haven't signed up I really encourage you to contact Gus Shulenberg on the TCG staff to set up your profile. Our Twitter hashtag is hashtag TCG1414 and thanks to our friends at HowlRound we're also live streaming right now and archives of all the plenary sessions will be made available on the TCG website. You can also find the breakout sessions that will repeat post on conference 2.0 and I just want to point out if you can't find a breakout session that you're interested in the San Diego Shoulder Institute has a breakout session that I thought would be interesting. The cadaver arthroscopic later jet surgical laboratory but seriously you can find the most up-to-date room schedule and scheduled breakouts on conference 2.0 but for those of you that are fighting the good fight against the virtual world please make sure you consult the inserts in your program for any changes and check at the registration table tomorrow for which hot sessions will repeat. Well everybody seems to be good and settled right I mean yeah okay so it is now my pleasure to introduce two more members of the San Diego host committee very Edelstein the artistic director of the old globe and Sam Woodhouse the artistic director of the San Diego Repertory Theater. Good morning welcome to the Pacific Rim deep south far west or as we like to call it border town. I just a couple of things first of all the view out there is real that's a real place across the bay. Secondly yesterday I woke up oh I'm Sam Woodhouse by the way I woke up and checked out the theater listings in San Diego and I found nine professional productions playing this weekend that I would like to see that have great word of mouth. There are two Shakespearean classics I'd love to see there's an experimental puppet show there are two Broadway musicals the 2013 Tony Award winner is on stage and there are four world premieres playing this weekend. Of course I can't see them all neither can you but I invite you to come check out what's happening in town we have 20 professionals theaters here we're very proud of the this new hot bed of activity in San Diego and I also invite you to come to my theater tonight the entire San Diego theater community is hosting the late night PCG party at the Lyceum home of San Diego Repertory Theater we would all of us who work in theater in San Diego love to see you there so come party with us tonight thanks. Good morning I'm Barry Edelstein artistic director of the Old Globe I say good morning but I'm not sure it is morning I'm not sure because I never made it to sleep last night. I was at the Old Globe teching my production of a fellow until 1 a.m. and then working on lighting with the brilliant Steven Strawbridge after that and by the time I got home my two-year-old son Augie was just waking up for his nightly 3 a.m. random screaming of vowels but it's a sound of my passion for TCG my commitment to the issues of import to the American theater my wish to see my cherished colleagues and of course my unslakeable thirst for attention that red-eyed and slurring here I am I am hugely disappointed that the dates of my tech coincide exactly with the dates of this conference and I ask your forgiveness for my scarceness here I was so looking forward to playing the gracious host but the garrison at Cyprus and lust and bloody thoughts and goats and monkeys and the propontic and the helispont have other ideas and so sadly I'm spending this weekend in 10 out of 12 directing rather than conferring still welcome to San Diego or as it's known at the Old Globe a big old slice of theater heaven to Teresa and everyone at TCG thank you for honoring my institution by inviting me to make some remarks I've only been here a short while about a year and a half now but I've learned a few things about my new hometown that I'd like to share with you San Diego is one of the country's great theater cities the most three large theaters the Old Globe the Loyal Playhouse and the San Diego rep whose 2013 budgets together totaled just over 40 million dollars and who played to nearly 400,000 ticket buyers then there are about 10 other theaters that are nonprofits with equity contracts of various numbers and full-time professional staffs of various sizes and a growing number of nimble companies whose small budgets support notably high levels of sophistication this rich ecosystem is supported by three great universities that train new generations of artists wonderfully many of their recent graduates I've been lucky to meet tell me that they are staying here in San Diego and not moving to Los Angeles or New York a healthy sign for our future there's also a massive and largely open-minded audience and exceedingly generous culture of individual philanthropy that recognizes the centrality of the arts in civic life and importantly there's an informed critical community including a mass circulation daily newspaper that still has a full-time theater critic San Diego as a municipal entity is very young and its keystone institutions will only in the next few years begin to mark their centennials this season of anniversaries is perhaps inevitably sparking a lot of thought about where the city has been and where it wants to go interestingly all this reflection happens to coincide with a few-year period in which a really surprising number of cultural institutions here like the globe have hired new directors so there's a real excitement in the air a palpable sense of possibility and the forward leaning posture of a body about to spring in some new directions that's especially true in Balboa Park where the old globe has made its home for 79 years the place is an astonishment not only for its intense beauty but also for the 28 cultural institutions that live in it there are maybe a half dozen major urban parks in the world that boasts such density of cultural and artistic activity but Balboa Park really is in a class by itself I'm psyched to be there every day and I urge you to visit you will emerge as I do bullish on the prospects of this remarkable Southern California metropolis the globe is the biggest theater in town and indeed the biggest arts institution of any kind in this city it's the second largest theater in California and the sixth largest regional theater in the country 10th largest if you count New York we have a budget of nearly 23 million dollars a full-time staff of about 110 and we issued over 600 w twos last year we produce a season of 14 plays on three stages Shakespeare musicals new American plays including both world premieres and increasingly second productions and revivals of classics of many stripes we train MFA actors in concert with the University of San Diego and we're in the midst of a soup to nuts review of our education and community outreach work to make it even stronger than it's been all of us at the globe are incredibly excited to have TCG in town and we're thrilled to see that the agenda of the conference this year is so forward-looking community diversity sustainability technology that's a progressive agenda and I want to thank TCG and congratulate it on its leadership which is inspiring and we need that leadership and we crave that inspiration because all of these agenda items are the very issues with which the globe grapples every day we look to TCG for inspiration we look to TCG for the power of numbers the power of collegiality and the power of a collective imagination to be sure the challenges that face all of us doing this work can be truly formidable and on some days frankly innervating there's no shame in admitting that just two weeks ago northern California lost a major regional theater and two months ago the San Diego opera went through a near-death experience that shook this city and yet from a purely artistic perspective in terms of the plays being written and the performances being given in the direction being conceived and the design being executed I honestly believe that the American theater right now is the healthiest it's been in the nearly three decades I've been working in it there's joy in admitting that as the artistic director of a great American theater it's my privilege to talk in public about why in the world these institutions might even be necessary in the first place yes I can do the bean counters song and dance of economic impact job creation and restaurant meals eaten by our ticket buyers and hotel rooms booked and how a thriving cultural sector makes it easy for corporate recruiters to lure executives to San Diego and and and and and but in practice I find that that speech is greeted most often by polite nods and glazed eyes the more engaging speech is about what I've experienced bringing 400 year old Shakespeare to vivid contemporary life for American audiences of all kinds a richness of laughter and a fury of gasp and groan that makes huge and manifest the ties of common experience which bond people across vast cultural chasms the more useful speech is about what it means when a philanthropist chooses to use her generosity to build a city a young one like San Diego by investing in the simple notion that art and art alone imputes value to people and that art is therefore indispensable not as some indulgence not as some caprice not merely as a source of an escapist giggle at the end of a long day at the office but instead as a civic principle as a matter of citizenship as a passport to full participation in the society in which one lives the more provocative speech is that on the eighth day God created narrative and that and that humanity's ability to tell a story is the signal quality that truly separates us from the animals the gorgeous fact that the globe's outdoor Shakespeare theater actually butts up against the San Diego zoo means that the very architecture of this city's greatest temple to storytelling is in itself a metaphor for all that makes human beings human in the first place and the more inspiring speech is about what every one of us in this hall knows we labor in these strange buildings with big rooms that have seats in rows and a platform at one end we tear our audiences tickets and they sit in those rows and then we plunge them into darkness they gaze at a special species of people who wear funny clothes and pretend to be things they aren't and two hours later when the darkness ends and the light comes back there's been some magic some act of alchemy some transformation that is ephemeral and gossamer and spiritual and it has somehow helped that audience glimpse just a tiny bit more of what it means to be human people in San Diego like it when I give that speech I like it when I give that speech because when I do I really mean it the circumstances of our work may be challenging but we are lucky that we get to do it it has value and it endures and it matters to us and to the world this gathering of passionate and committed people of the theater gives me the ocular proof again welcome to San Diego a great American theater town drink some craft beer hit the beach see a play on behalf of the old globe in the entire San Diego theater community let me say that we are thrilled that you're here and we look forward to learning from all of you in the next two days thank you all right thanks Barry thank you Sam Barry if you didn't tell us you were up all night we would never know so now it is my great pleasure and my great honor to welcome the TCG board chair Diane Rodriguez to the stage Diane is an obi award-winning theater artist and the associate producer and director of new play production at center theater group in Los Angeles California please join me in giving a hand for Diane wow day two yes I've already been inspired I've already been challenged and I've already had my fill of carna sada tacos I tell you they are the best in the world here but here at TCG it is not business as usual one of the core ideas of TCG is that it serves individuals working in the theater that's all of you out there theater workers and theater artists it doesn't serve the theater or the building but rather those that work inside and those that work outside its confines making work for their communities and for our theaters to produce the myth about TCG that we serve only the large theaters no the myth about TCG that we favor only small theaters no we are invested in both and all that is in between we are invested in artists that are writing our plays and supporting those plays artistically and who are making or devising work together in a rehearsal room we acknowledge that the future and survival of our theaters and our field relies on social equity and aesthetic evolution the TCG board is made up of theater professionals independent artists and practitioners in other fields and among many responsibilities we serve the mission of TCG and we support the brilliant and expert TCG staff and serve as their brain trust and I would like to introduce my colleagues today those members of our TCG board that are here and as I read their names would you please stand and hold your applause until I finished and then we can give them a roaring thank you for their service Sarah Bellamy Patrick Bradford Ralph Bryan Joshua Dax Larissa fast horse Cynthia Furman Amie Hayes Michelle Hemsley Robert Hupp Chris Jennings Tim Jennings Marshall Jones Kwame Kwe Arma Max Leventhal Kate Lumpoma Kevin Moriarty Jonathan Mosconi Eric Rosen Michael Rosenberg Tim Sandberg Rock Schulfer Mark Valdez Clyde Valentine and Megan Wanlis thank you New England foundation of the arts is a forward thinking foundation and has had has been a steadfast supporter for American artists who tour both in the dance and theater world in the United States for the past four years NIFA has given sizable touring grants to our national ensembles who devise work or who make work collaboratively in an effort to create touring a touring network for our American artists artists receive monies to support a premiere and like money in the bank these funds can also offset touring fees for presenters and producers it's an amazing program that can support efforts to bring an ensemble and present them in your theater and we and how great it would be if more TCG theaters invested in this program and used it this is a foundation that opened a door and held it open for our theater artists to enter and to tour because of that TCG would like to present the 2014 national funders award to the New England foundation of the arts key to Sullivan program manager accepts the award for NIFA there really are a lot of you out there thank you Diane on behalf of my colleagues at NIFA the National Theater Project our former ed Rebecca Blunk it is great honor to accept this TCG award thank you so very much we consider it a privilege to support artists presenters and theaters that are doing such amazing and exciting work our program support artists across many forms of expression many geographies connecting them with collaborators and communities fueling creative exchange and public discourse and strengthening the creative economy the goal of each program and project that is brought to life at NIFA is to build a stronger and more dynamic infrastructure for the arts through grants convenings online tools and research after the initial research and planning in 2009 NIFA created the National Theater Project supported by the Andrew W. Mullen Foundation modeled in part on that other program you probably know the National Dance Project NTP was designed as a program that would promote the development of new artists led ensemble and devised theater work while extending the life of those projects through touring the work supported reflects the evolving theater environment exposes audiences to exciting new work and nurtures partnerships between artists and development and presenting partners not including the next round of grantees NTP in these four years will have supported 25 projects that have or will have traveled to 28 states and the District of Columbia projects that have been supported come from companies and collaborations that you already know well to some that you don't know now but will soon know from the Worcester Group and City Company to Mondo Vizaro progress theater and complex movements presenters that have received subsidies and travel grants range from national parks and military bases from regional theaters to retirement homes TCG theaters can and have participated by bringing NTP projects into your spaces not merely for performances although we really do like those but also by extending your generosity and nurturing projects during development working with them on creating other partnerships that will help the project move because we all know it's all about who you know it's all about the relationship and we're a big fan of copros and also just spreading the word that there's some really really great work out there and although I have the honor of standing up here and accepting this award I'm not NTP the national theater project all by myself there are many people who make this program work first I have to acknowledge the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation without them this project would not be possible so thank you Susan and Katie I know you're out there somewhere and all of the folks at Mellon but other funders have supported NTP thank you to the California Community Foundation and the city of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs one of the most fun parts of doing this job of aside from seeing theater which you know is the fun part of all of our jobs I have had an NTP has had and benefited from the care and expertise of 18 people who have served as advisors so I'm going to go through this really quick. Diane, Rob, Michael, Morgan, Shay, Clyde, Mark, David, Kathy, Chuck, Mike, Colleen, Howard, Lisa, May, and Carlton, Lane, and Ryo. As well as the dedication of others who are or have served on the NTP team, Sandy, Elizabeth, and now Mina. Mina Mellick is our new program coordinator get to know that name and of course Jane Preston our interim co-executive director and director of programs and Rebecca Blanc who retired from NIFA after 29 years of serving the arts both nationally and regionally and of course last but not least there are the incredible artists that NTP has the privilege of supporting so on behalf of all of us participating in this great experiment that is the National Theater Project thank you TCG and all of you with this award. You almost saw me invite it right there I almost fell down and embarrassed myself. Thank you Kita and thanks for all that you and NIFA do to support theaters across this country we are truly truly grateful and now I am really excited about this next part we have a really fun infomercial from the editorial staff of American Theater Magazine who have been working hard on developing a new online version of TCG's now 30 year old publication it's really going to revolutionize the way you receive your theater news in the future. Please join me in welcoming editor-in-chief Jim O'Quinn and senior editor Eliza Bent for a really exciting glimpse of American Theater's future. Welcome to Friday. How many of you in this room are readers of American Theater Magazine? Looks pretty good. How many of you would like to be able to read American Theater online on your computer or your iphone? Interesting reaction yeah okay well it's going to become possible because American Theater after as Kevin said 30 years of publication is finally entering the 21st century with a brand new website it's called www.americantheater.org it's already live if you'd like to go go there and see a preview of what's about to happen we're launching this electronic version of American Theater this October with our season preview issue and we're very excited about it speaking of online let me also point out that right now you can go to the TCG website and see reports by American Theater staff on what you've been doing and seeing yesterday and the day before along with Micheal Daniels wonderful always wonderful photographs so there's already reports on the TCG website about the conference at this point but back to americantheater.org Eliza Bent senior editor is going to take you through some of the things you'll be able to do and see with this new edition of American Theater Eliza thanks Jim I hope everyone packed their bags because we're about to go on a screenshot safari of americantheater.org as Jim said we'll be launching in October and I'm going to go over not only what you can expect to see and how you'll benefit from our online presence but also the kinds of partnerships and opportunities that will be available to you voila theater magic the american theater.org homepage this features our latest stories in a photo flash box containing containing highlighted tales of teatro with updated content daily our navigation bar easily lets you sort between the hard-hitting news you've come to depend on such as who has won which award who has traded job places the photos and features that you love to flip through and the videos that you can't help but stare at the left navigation bar contains information about TCG and american theater including the magazine's history our masthead and how to contact us scrolling down you'll see recently posted articles and sidebars listing our most popular stories and news I repeat our staff will be updating this content daily the revolution will be online okay all right Donald Trump himself told me that he was envious of the prime real estate at the top of our page advertising real estate that is oh you can show off your latest productions your latest class offerings whatever it is that you want to show off we've also got homepage advertising on the right and left sidebars next up we have an example of a story page tag you're it sorry each story each story will be tagged for city state theater company and artist this system that will be using will be able will be able to organize pages of content about a particular person a member theater a region of the country or a nation around the world advertising can also be targeted to type of content or by geolocation so if you're advertising a show in minnesota and you only want that ad to appear on articles about minnesotan theater we can do that for you if you want only minnesotans to see your ad done you're welcome not to brag uh but i'm going to brag another great feature about this new website is that it will enable us to show more production images of more productions from your theaters so we plan to use this photo gallery feature for our design-centric production notebook department but we also will be starting an online only feature titled opening night you can probably guess what that means it's a highlight of shows opening on a particular evening around the country as jim would say i know can you believe it is it hot in here or do i have archive fever yes i just referenced jaquaderie does meditation on remembrance and yes that means that the website will have a full digital archive of all of the magazine's content since 1984 this here gives you that's pretty great this gives you a glimpse of how all of the past issues are going to be organized so that you can find the entirety of any issue online with the click of a mouse or the flick of a finger bottom line is that we won't have to ask jim if he remembers when a certain article was published and that's not a good thing it's a great thing okay thank you very much for waking up so early in the morning uh for being here with us for for bearing the cheese and corn of these jokes but i really would be lying if i didn't say that we aren't beyond thrilled about what this new website means for the publication for the field and for you our people uh american theater magazines revitalized online presence means more coverage of more people like you projects that you're involved with and theaters and places where you're working and that's not a good thing it's a totally super awesome thing okay we're confident this digital initiative will secure our role as the leading voice in the conversation about not-for-profit theater across the country and around the world but you don't have to wait until the fall to visit us online you can check out our landing page which is www.americantheater.org and there you will find out more information about what's coming up and even pitch suggestions about what we should cover a shutter to think about my already exploding inbox see you online in october thanks eliza your jokes in real life are much funnier than that just once uh no i'm kidding we're really really excited about this obviously and thanks jim and eliza for that that was great um uh it is now my pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker this morning who has her own exciting vision of technology in the future jane mcgonigal her new york times bestseller reality is broken how games make us better and how they can change the world makes the case that the gamer spirit an attitude of fun dedicated collective problem solving is our greatest asset as we face the problems of the 21st century she has created games for the world bank the olympic games the american heart association the new york public library and much more she also has a background as an off broadway stage manager and she received her phd at uc berkeley here in california in performance studies in other words she is one of us so please give jane mcgonigal your warmest welcome thank you thank you kevin thank you hi everyone well thank you i can't tell you how excited i was to receive this invitation because anyone who knows me in real life or who follows me on twitter knows that there is nothing i'm more passionate about than theater in fact i annoy the many thousands of gamers who follow me by tweeting more about the shows that i've seen uh then the games that i played um and this is a little known fact i actually got my break in the gaming industry when i was a first year student in the department of theater dance and performance studies at uc berkeley and i convinced a new gaming startup that they needed a stage manager for the live action elements of their game and i i'll be in charge of the actors and the props and it'll be great and that was my first gaming job um so here i am 14 years later still trying to bring the power of theater and games together to change people's real lives and to solve real problems and that's what we're going to talk about today and i want to thank you for spending some of your time this morning taking games seriously because it's not something that people often do you know we think about games as being trivial they're they're fun but they're they're pretty much a waste of time right but but today we're going to take games seriously together as a way to empower communities to change their own lives and to maybe even change the world and i thought no better way to start taking games seriously than to share with you some good news so are you guys ready for some good news yes okay here it comes a billion gamers worldwide humanity has recently reached this critical milestone this is a billion people who spend at least an hour a day playing video games you guys look less excited about this news than i was anticipating okay that's fair enough i i know because we worry a billion hours a day playing games that sounds like too much time um and to be fair uh people who worry that we spend too much time playing video games they do have some compelling statistics on their side for example the fact that we collectively spend 300 million minutes a day playing angry birds that's a lot of time that's 400 thousand years so far that as a species we have spent avenging this terrible crime you know the the bad piggies stole the eggs they got mad and then we got mad on their behalf and we're still mad or think about a more hardcore game like call of duty yeah all right the average call of duty player you included i'm sure spends 170 hours every single year playing justice game by the way imagine if you could get every theater goer to spend 170 hours in your theater every year they spend 170 hours playing just this one game call of duty games that's the equivalent of a month of full-time work that every gamer is spending on just this one game a month of full-time work and in fact recently one in four players worldwide called in sick to work when the new call of duty game came out to stay home and launch so gamers are playing games like it's their job and there's some there's some research that can shed some the light on this phenomenon gallop which studies happiness and engagement at workplaces worldwide they recently discovered that 81 percent of global workers are not engaged at their jobs what that means is that people show up at the workplace and they don't think there's meaning or purpose to what they're doing they don't feel like they're developing skills and abilities they don't feel like their signature strengths are being called on every day and they don't feel like they're a part of a community or something bigger and this means that people are deeply unhappy and they're spending the majority of their day or their nights doing something that they don't care about and this engagement problem starts earlier than the workplace in the United States the longer you stay in school the less engaged you are kids show up in elementary school eight out of ten feel like there's meaning and purpose to what they're learning and they feel optimistic about their chances for success by middle school is only six out of ten and by high school only four out of ten still feel optimistic about their chance for success only feel four out of ten feel like there's a reason to be doing what they're doing at school this incredible engagement gap people not feeling appropriately challenged and inspired at work or at school is why we have seven billion hours a week being spent on video games because video games are an environment where we have the chance to develop new skills and abilities where we have the opportunity to connect to other people who are equally excited about what we're doing together where we can be inspired by heroic stories and incredibly difficult quests and these seven billion hours a week I feel are a resource for artists for activists to get folks who are looking for wholehearted engagement with difficult challenges in video games to feel like they can tackle wholeheartedly difficult challenges in real life but that as artists and activists and and community leaders that we can engage with gamers and something more than just the virtual world these numbers by the way are only going to go up these seven billion hours a week if you look at the gaming demographics 99 of boys in the US under 18 and 94 of girls under 18 play digital games at least an hour a day this is another piece of good news by the way we've closed the gender gap in gaming yes I know you may laugh but it's true with all of the benefits the cognitive benefits and the learning benefits and the technology confidence that comes with games this is really good news and in fact 92 percent of two-year-olds in the United States are already playing video games 92 percent of two-year-olds I love this picture by the way I don't know if you can see the drool coming down I think it really sums up the next generation's feeling about digital entertainment so it reminds me of this quote by a cultural critic columnist Rob Mayhee he said you know it's inevitable soon we'll all be gamers and that's true for all of you as well by the way because we're going to play a game in about five minutes so get ready for that but what is it that really drives gamers I've been researching this for more than a decade and if there's one thing I want you to think about the power of games it's this list up here this this is a list of the top 10 reasons why people say they play games thousands of gamers studied worldwide over two years to try to understand what feelings do games provoke what do you seek when you play and what is it that games successfully provide you and it turned out that it's positive emotion that when we play video games we're seeking to change how we feel we don't want to feel bored or lonely or angry or frustrated or uninspired we want to feel these 10 emotions we want to feel joy we want to feel relief we want to feel love right because three out of four gaming hours are spent playing collaboratively rather than competitively if you were curious and building these strong bonds with other players and we want to feel surprised something unexpected happens in the game or the story we want to feel pride we're getting better we're setting goals we're achieving them we want to feel curiosity you know what's going to happen next in the story what's the solution to this puzzle we want to feel excitement get that adrenaline going get the high interest levels or physiologically mind and body at peak excitement we want to feel on wonder right which is what you feel when you're connected to something bigger than yourself it could be the massively multiplayer community it could be a heroic story that gives you goosebumps we want to feel contentment and underrated positive emotion it means we wouldn't rather be doing anything else we're happy exactly with where we are and what's going on the number one positive emotion that gamers say they seek when they play games and this should be very interesting i would think the performing arts community is gamers say they want to feel creative right they're looking for an opportunity to use the creative talents to think of new strategies to build something to to to work out problems and to use that creative agency to make a difference in the world it's a virtual world but it's still a world and that sense of creative agency to make decisions and try strategies and learn from your mistakes and fail and get better that creative agency is the number one thing that gamers want to feel now i want to give you a firsthand experience of all these 10 positive emotions and if if games are so good at provoking them i feel like the best way to do that should be by playing a game with you so my little challenge for myself is i'm going to try to provoke all 10 of these positive emotions in you in roughly 60 seconds so does that sound like a good idea i think it does okay so i'm going to teach you one of my favorite games and we're all going to play it together this is the game it's called massively multiplayer thumb wrestling so this is this is thumb wrestling for the gamer generation we gotta we gotta bring it up a scale and i want to play this with you because this game really requires a lot of people so it's hard for me to play in my normal life like you need at least 50 or 100 people to get a good game going so so thank you for agreeing to play it with me because i don't get to play it very often i'd love a few volunteers maybe three or four people to come up on stage and help me demo it anybody who wants to come please just come on up we're all going to play but there we go one two three okay great if you're moving you're on stage good good good all right that's all hey hey all right i love you guys okay so uh before we start does everybody know traditional thumb wrestling one two um your david's gonna help me out one two three four i declare thumb war and we wrestle and david beat me because he's very good at this game okay good now we're the gamer generation we need a bigger challenge so david come back over here and and i think is it nicole nicole come on and put your thumb in here too because we could all wrestle at the same time right and we could even you know come on over molly molly could put our thumb in here and we could all wrestle now this is the most important rule if you've missed this rule then you'll be hopeless at this game it's the first person to pin someone else's thumb that wins the hand so oh i lost yes nicole beat me already uh so you don't want to wait over here and like oh i'm gonna let them duke it out and then i'll sweep in his last minute no you're too late you're the first you guys you can see this game is awesome because they're not even gonna listen to me they're just gonna be crying that's all right that's all right by the way a little uh a little warning to everyone when you play if you are a big strong man or woman don't squeeze too hard don't hurt anybody and if you have beautiful long nails do not dig them into anybody else's palm just be thinking about that okay so that would be uh that would be good and if i could get the slides back up on the screen we can see uh this is a typical hand now you don't have to hold yourself back you can be ambitious so for example um as many thumbs as you want to put into the node you can but so this is good but gamer generation i think we can be even more challenged i haven't to notice we still have thumbs lying around right so maybe we should find some other people to wrestle with so here's jet and maybe reach something grab joy with your subscriber yeah and then maybe joy would reach out with their seat yes okay they can hear lift you can see where uh you can almost see on the screen all right and then the idea is that you get all thumbs connected now if we have more people i could reach out and grab them and joy you could reach out behind you just demo for me yeah reach out you grab some other people and the idea is that we get everybody in the room connected in one node okay everyone reaching across aisles reaching behind you you guys are going to be very good at this game i love it okay um and uh you wrestle both your thumbs at the same time that's that's the that's the other exciting part so um you guys are ready to be kind of like experts okay you guys all right and that's how you play massively multi-player thumb rats like okay break it up break it up let's go back to your seat back to your seat back to your seat all right good job now before we all play together i just want to give you a little more insight into this game so there are different levels of the game so this is sort of the basic level we're going to play the basic level today you can see everybody reaches out and grabs hands but some more advanced levels this is called the death star configuration so your science fantasy geek you get what that means this is for science geeks this is the mobius strip you loop back on this infinity it's it's existential um and this is the hardest level um so i think tcg 2015 we'll we'll reunite and we'll we'll go for this level but we're going to go for the basic level now and just to remind you here's how it works i'm going to give you about 30 seconds to form the network if you're on the aisles you have a special role make sure you reach across the aisle because if the thumbs only count towards our high score if everyone in the room is connected and we're going to go for a score of about 1700 thumbs i think we have in the room right now which will be the highest score in california this year so far so um after you get the thumb the network made don't start to wrestle until i say go okay so stand up let's make the network you have 30 seconds go good reach across reach across good good grab that thumb somebody grab that you can do it look for that grab that thumb connected wave it around so we can get it in there's one there there's one there grab it are you in so till her thumb is in someone else's hand you guys are great that a score of 1700 anybody beats that this year okay so let's do a little recap see how we did with the 10 positive emotions uh let's start with curiosity i said massively multiplayer thumb wrestling and you were like i've never heard of that before what is that how does that work i got you a little bit curious creativity so it actually took some creativity uh especially with those last few thumbs how does this go we have to do it like this i have to reach around so we did some problems solving together and you guys were creative and you solved the problem which was great um surprise you know the the feeling of trying to wrestle two thumbs at once is an unfamiliar sensation there's a little bit of surprise and you start to do that excitement you heard the sound that went up in the room as you started playing and like you know hey uh you know you're really good at this or this person's really into it and so there's like a little bit of excitement going on um you had some relief right the relief of you've been sitting here for like 45 minutes you got to stand up and have some physical relief to your bodies not having to sit still and be silent um how about contentment i didn't see any of you checking your text messages there's any emails while we were playing so i know you were content with what we were doing um how about pro oh no joy well you do you guys see your faces you had a lot of fun i'm going to call that joy if we played for another five minutes it would be like bliss but we'll we definitely got to joy um pride okay so um no we'll do love love uh so i'm like a really big science geek um one of the things that me interested in is oxytocin which is a neurotransmitter and the more oxytocin you have the more you like the people around you you want to help them you trust them you feel really connected and it turns out that one of the fastest and most reliable ways to increase the oxytocin in your bloodstream is to hold someone else's hand in a safe setting for at least six seconds so you guys do the math you were all holding hands for way more than six seconds uh so your oxytocin levels are sky high you have been biochemically primed to like each other and want to help each other yes this is my gift to you take advantage of the networking opportunities if there's a favor you want to ask or a card you want to hand out uh you're biochemically primed to want to help each other now um this is the last oh all in wonder um well all in wonder means being a part of something bigger than yourself so how cool is this when was the last time you came to a theater or a hall and you were physically connected to every single person in the room right we have everyone at tcg was physically connected for just a minute i think that is literally awesome literally wonderful um and finally pride so um how many of you are like me you can admit it i always lose both thumbs no matter what you do just admit it who lost both thumbs that that is totally cool don't worry about that because you learned a new skill today right you didn't know how to play this game before you came in here now you do so you have leveled up in life you've learned it's amazing skill uh how many of you won just one thumb you won one of your thumbs all right good job i've uh speaking of pride i've good news for you according to the official rules of massively multiplayer thumb wrestling this makes you a grand master of the game um it's because there aren't that many people who know how to play it so we have to it's like accelerate the process compared to chess or something like that um how many of you won both your thumbs you're amazing that is very good uh so get ready to update facebook twitter uh you are officially legendary grand masters of this game so congratulations now uh if you would like to become a legendary grand master and you didn't have much success this time i will just we'll finish this game by uh me giving you my best advice if you want to be a legendary grand master so first of all make sure that both of your hands are in different nodes you be surprised people you can't win twice if you're both in the same node so both in different nodes and then scope out the people around you and try to pick out the the people who look kind of weak like they're going to be a bit easy to get okay so you're going to start with that hand and uh as soon as you know the person says go do something crazy with this hand so nobody can possibly win as soon as you knock out the weak side stop moving suddenly swoop in for the kill and you are a legendary grand master so congratulations all right that's good that's good okay so why do these positive emotions matter right so i'm a scientist in addition to a game designer and my favorite thing to research for the past few years has been the power of positive emotions to change how we think and act in real life um there's a lot of research if you're interested if you can just remember show me the science i've put hundreds of these studies on my website so you can go to show me the science dot com like show me the money show me the science um but the most important bit of research has to do with the fact that the more positive emotions we feel the more determined and motivated we are in the face of difficulty in the face of adversity that if we can have on average two three four positive emotions for every negative emotion we feel in our daily lives that we are less likely to give up in the in the face of adversity that we are able to recruit allies that we have more energy to pursue the goals that we want to pursue in real life so these these positive emotions have a real impact on our mind and body and they allow us to do things that are difficult to become more ambitious and to develop more support from our friends and family for the goals we want to achieve um and i thought i instead of science um let me just show you this beautiful portrait series of uh of what gamers look like when they're playing and i want you to see if you can spot the signs of resilience on their faces so remember this resilience means you know you are motivated by challenge you don't give up that you just you wholeheartedly wrestle with things that are difficult right that is resilient um it's very subtle to look closely but i think you can do it okay here we go so uh yeah you i don't i don't need to say anything you guys get the idea um it's a good once we had grit and determination um this guy who said playing games was like escapist passive activity right you can see playing games is quite hard work this is the bliss this is the flow face we lose track of time and it's three hours later we're still playing candy crush what happened i don't know um and uh this face this guy's one of my favorites because i think uh if you didn't know he was playing a game you'd be like a little worried about him um the nostrils are flared the pupils are dilated um i think it's safe to say he's about to fail but the great thing uh the great thing about having those 10 positive emotions to power you is that you can fail constantly gamers fail 80 of the time that's that's the typical uh experience of it's failing and you learn from your mistakes so you can have a face like this where things are going very poorly and then just a few seconds later you know you have a face like this like this is like before and after um you surprise yourself with what you're capable of you achieve this kind of of epic win and when i look at these faces it makes me think of this this uh quote i came across in graduate school actually by a psychologist of children's play brian sutton smith he wasn't studying video games he was studying children's play and he said the opposite of play isn't work it's depression now that is true and and it's so counter to what we've been taught to think about playing games you've been taught to think that playing games should be uh completely separate from work right because they're trivial or they're escapist but in fact as you can see from those photos one gameplay is very hard work right it requires our attention and our hardest efforts to achieve a goal we can also see that it's really the opposite of depression because when we're depressed we lack optimism we lack confidence in our own abilities we lack the physiological energy to engage with things that are difficult right we withdraw from the world but but when we play it's the opposite right we're full of energy we're full of confidence we believe that extraordinary victories are possible against all odds um and that sense of purpose and meaning even to our actions that there's a reason why we play that there's an important mission or story to be told now what's really cool for science geeks um is we can now see into the games of brain uh the brains of gamers while they're playing and we can see that gameplay is literally the opposite of depression so brian sutton smith said that you know 30 years ago that the opposite of play is depression well now uh this is at stanford university thanks to their fmri research we can see that literally neurologically gameplay is the opposite of depression let me show you what i mean um this is a comparison of somebody playing a video game the one that's all lit up versus somebody watching a video game so by the way the benefits of gaming you can't just be an audience member you have to play that's why we played together because there are no benefits from watching someone else play the benefits come from being an active agent yourself in the game and uh the researchers discovered that there were two really important differences um between playing a game and just kind of watching someone else play right um being an audience member the first difference is in the cottage and the thalamus the cottage and thalamus are the motivation centers of the brain when these parts of the brain are lit up it means that you will do whatever it takes to achieve your goal um now this is also the part of the brain associated with addiction so you may have seen some rather sensational headlines in the past year or so uh video games light up the same part of the brain as cocaine because it's true because when we come addicted to drugs we will do anything it takes right to get what we want but in other areas of our lives you know if we're trying to learn a new skill we want to train for a marathon we're learning a foreign language um where we don't want to give up right uh it's we love to see that part of the brain lit up the more motivation and termination the better the reason why this part of the brain lights up when we play games of course is that every game gives us a goal right you have to rescue the princess you have to defeat the enemy you have to get the score you have to solve the puzzle when we play a game we accept the goal voluntarily that goal energizes us it concentrates our attention motivation on a challenge and that's why we get the caught in valmus going so that's wonderful builds motivation determination at the same time the hippocampus is going crazy the hippocampus is a part of the brain associated with learning and memory the more this part of the brain lights up the faster you learn the more effective learning is and the reason why this part of the brain lights up when we play is because every game is designed for us to be bad at it the first time we play so uh you know the next time you do the thumb wrestling you're going to be better because you're going to learn from your experience right there will be a next time trust me you will play that again sometime in your life um and the hippocampus uh it goes crazy because we want to get better that is a that is the pleasure of gaming is improving our skills right and and if we get really good at a game we usually find another game to play right it's why as adults we don't play tic-tac-toe because we're done learning we there's nothing left to learn we have to play a game that will continue to drive us to learn so this is kind of the one-two punch of gaming of of of all games not just video games this desire to achieve a difficult goal and the thrill of learning and improving right and these sort of two character strengths of perseverance and love of learning that games develop in us um I like to talk about this neurologically as the state of a super empowered hopeful individual the super empowered hopeful individual is somebody who believes that they have a realistic chance of making a difference in someone else's live or or in in the world around them they feel optimistic they feel like they have real skills and abilities that can make a positive difference and what I want to turn to you now and the remainder of our time together is you know what would it mean to use our american theaters to create super empowered hopeful individuals what if we could use our spaces and our artists and our community to help our audiences become super empowered in their own lives and I thought I'd show you something today I've never shown this in a talk before but here we are at a crossing borders conference and it reminded me of something I saw actually when I was just finishing up my phd so we'll uh we'll play this video will you um click play for me please um so uh this is uh this is pretty local to where we are now and we don't need to hear the audio um and this is the wall that separates the united states from mexico um and we're the gamer generation so we don't see a wall as an obstacle right we see it as a platform for play and in fact this is a project uh viva border volleyball that brought people out to the beaches to play volleyball over the fence that separates the united states from mexico that's great right i love this i love this um and in fact this is not some newfangled gamer idea i actually found this just this past week this idea goes back to 1979 a community in Arizona has been doing this every year since 1979 and the whole community comes out to play this game across the wall and uh this is uh this is such a great example because i think in a nutshell it shows what games can do for your community it gives them an invitation to act differently to transgress a little bit community norms um social uh responsibilities and it tells them exactly what they can do you know they don't have to improvise there's no performance anxiety if i show you a volleyball court you know what you're supposed to do it gives you a way to participate without having to truly be a performer yourself right because it's so natural when we hear the rules of a game you know what to do and that is the beauty of games and it's the beauty of bringing games back into theater um is the possibility that people don't have to be comfortable performing in order to participate and that we can all understand the rules of the game to make it easy and comfortable for people to participate so what i show you now is a game that i made um that i personally consider a performance event um and not just a game certainly not just a digital game um and it was sort of inspired by world of warcraft and games like like that um these mmorpgs where people come together in large groups online you might gather 50 of your friends or 100 of your friends to tackle a truly epic quest you're gonna go on a raid you're gonna do epic battle and you all have to show up at the same time in the same virtual space to work together and everybody brings their different skills and abilities that evening to achieve the goal well what if we could do that in real life what if we could use our community spaces our most beautiful and inspiring community spaces that are certainly epic and grand as anything in a virtual world and we could bring people together to ask them to be creative in that space to solve problems in that space uh so the space that i was lucky enough to work with is the beautiful steven schwarzman building for the new york public library um if you've never been this is the one that was in ghost buster so you probably at least have a visual it's gorgeous um and uh the new york public library has a problem though which is that young people don't like to go to the library anymore if they ever like to go i mean really now they do not like to go they do all the research online it's all google and wikipedia but these are amazing physical spaces that inspire you when you walk into them to think bigger thoughts and and to dream differently about the future and and there's also the the benefit of coming to be in a space with other people other thinkers other researchers other scholars other learners other creators that just by being in the same physical space there might be that synchronicity of something new um arising so the library wanted to bring young people to the library and they didn't know how to do it they thought maybe a game would help so they asked me if i could make a game and they had terrible ideas uh uh the the worst ideas were probably some of the ideas that you thought i might get up here and talk to you about these sort of gamification ideas so i know we'll give people points every time they come to the library and we can give them an achievement badge for visiting different collections and the reason why i thought this was a terrible idea is that you're trying to motivate people to do something that you want them to do right i want you to take out books because i'm the library and that's that's what i want but what about what they want right so as a game designer my first job is to imagine what would be an extraordinary accomplishment for the gamers what what goal would they love to achieve but maybe they don't have the resources or they don't have the confidence that they could achieve it so one thing i found out in course of my research is that young people uh 91 of them want to write a book someday now 91 do not want to read a book but it's sad but true but they want to write a book they feel like they have something worth saying they they have a voice that should be heard or a story that should be told um and that's interesting so i started to i wanted to keep that in mind that young people want to write a book um i still wasn't sure so i asked them to send me some inspirational material to draw on um and they sent me all these old archival documents and different things in the collection and there was one document they sent me as soon as i saw it i knew i could make them a game this was the document um this is published in scientific america in 1911 showing this new library in this amazing technological feat where they were storing books eight levels underneath the ground and this is in fact how they store books in the library today to the state a hundred years later there are eight levels underneath the city streets of midtown Manhattan if you walk around midtown Manhattan you are walking on top of city of books how cool is that nobody knows that it's like the secret city of books underneath the city ground um and as soon as i saw this i knew it could make a game because do you guys see it like this is basically donkey kong are you right you like okay so my idea was inspired by the eight levels of the library i would create an eight level game where if you got to the top level you have written a book that will be printed on demand listed in the card catalog you are published author with the new york public library and your book will go on the physical stacks of the new york public library your book is real and it's in the stack so that was the idea for the game i'm going to show you a trailer for the game now and then i'll explain how it worked worry about that trailer so the idea was we would launch this game on may 20th that would be our opening night and we would lock 500 young people into the library overnight this is inspired by the mixed up files of mrs basally frank law and i'm gonna you guys read that one okay yeah uh that was the first idea i had when i was still talking to them i'm like oh we want you to game blah blah blah and i was like can i lock people in overnight we'll get back to you but they agreed and uh we were going to lock them in overnight sun set to sunrise six p.m to six a.m nobody's allowed out till they write a book um and to find people to come for opening night the game was going to run for a year you come to the library anytime it was open for a year and play this game but opening night we put this trailer online that was it and we're like oh i hope 500 people will want to come and do this and i got i heard from the a member of the board of directors a very senior gentleman um who'd been with the library for many years right after he put this trailer online he was very upset with me um it was a grave concern in his voice and he said he said mrs mcgonigal is it possible that you will humiliate the library with this video and i said oh my god what do you mean um well you have you've just promised you've told the world that we will have 500 young people spend a Friday night at the library we we can't even get three young people to the library on a typical weekend and this is a Friday night and it's overnight and what if nobody comes and you know i said okay yes that would be terrible but in fact we had more than 10,000 young people apply for those 500 spots yeah they had to write an essay just to be considered to uh to come on that first night um and here are the 500 uh first players that we chose pouring in we locked the doors behind them we played the same music from the trailer as they came in it gave everybody goosebumps it was awesome and uh and uh now you're wondering how does playing a game help you write a book um i actually came up with the idea three months before i solved the problem i said i said young people want to be published authors this game is going to turn them into published authors it took me three months of hanging out the library wandering around having very bad ideas um to come up with one that and the idea was we created an app um and they would be downloaded as soon as they came to the library and the app would take you through the library looking for these 100 artifacts that had inspired humanity and changed history artifacts like um well you can see here people wandering around looking for these artifacts like the Declaration of Independence um which the library has a copy of and not just any copy but you can see a copy that Thomas Jefferson was working on at the last minute scribbling things out changing the words around um which is the interesting uh we'll talk about that in a minute um and they would we put qr codes on all these objects and some of them were books on shelves and some of them were things you could touch and some of them were behind class um and and they would use a qr code to prove that they were face to face with history right they were having this this face to face moment with an object that had changed the world and once they were there we told them a secret about the object um so for the Declaration of Independence we pointed out do you see that section that scribbled out that criticized the institution of slavery did you know that with the Declaration of Independence we were originally supposed to start talking about the slavery issue calling for an end to slavery Thomas Jefferson's friends talked him out of it um isn't that interesting that at the last minute Thomas Jefferson wasn't sure what's what's the right thing to do you know how far is too far how much is enough um and he he that insecurity and that doubt and needing his friends to give him advice we thought that would humanize the process of making history because you could see that this wasn't this document that changed the world but in fact there was all this sort of human um questions and doubts and and desire behind it and so every object when we shared that secret we were really trying to help the players see themselves as people who might someday change the world so they could relate to these people who had changed the world and the last thing was that every object came with a writing quest to help you write this book so for the Declaration of Independence the writing quest was to make your own declaration for today that was written hundreds of years ago what needs to be declared today and most importantly you need to find 56 people to co-sign your declaration that's how many people signed the Declaration of Independence here's a player that night standing on a table in the Rose Reading Room reading the Declaration he wrote because he finished that quest and he as I recall wrote a Declaration of Interdependence too much competition today we're too independent we need more dependence and interdependence and collaboration is a very millennial thing to say and he's trying to trying to get people to come and sign it by reading it out loud now we wanted to have the book published at the end of the night the first book so we found this guy in Brooklyn who had been trained in the UK in medieval book binding techniques so he showed up with this like torture contraption and all this leather and he was sewing together the book as we went every time the players finished a quest we had editors from New Yorker magazine from Penguin Books they were there to copy at it and line at it and then we printed out the pages and they were stacking up like a progress bar over the course of the night this is what the Rose Reading Room looked like at 3 a.m. it had never looked like that before except for once they told me later they had rented 300 x-boxes and held a halo video game tournament that was the last time they had that many kids there I felt like our game was a little bit more on mission for the library you're wondering how they stayed awake all night besides all the free pizza and coffee they were very creative because gamers are creative this guy without asking anyone for permission brought a vuvuzela that that horn from South Africa that makes the most annoying sound in the world he just wandered around the whole night blowing it to make sure you weren't asleep which was very good so at the end of the night the 500 players that collaborated to rate 1184 stories these were all stories about the world they wanted to make the future they wanted to see become a reality or the dreams they wanted to fulfill for themselves in their own lives at 6 a.m. they lined up to hand sign the book not just as the way you would autograph a book but but also as a commitment as a pledge to making this future a reality and we called the book a hundred ways to make history volume one because the game was playable for a year so people would come the whole year and make more volumes of this book and in fact there was an online version so people could play from anywhere in the world and there are different versions with different answers to these writing quests in libraries and schools all across the world now the big epic win for this project for me was originally the New York Public Library had agreed to put this book in the general research stacks right so the stacks that you saw in the diagram now the general research stacks are they're good but that's where you know all the new stuff comes there's like a new biography of Beyonce that'll come in there and then like in 10 years or no one cares it'll go away and who knows what'll happen to it 20 years we'll give her 20 years before no one cares but at the end of the night when the president saw what the players had created and and how amazing it was she stood up in front of everybody and she said we the New York Public Library pledged to defend your book for as long as New York City is standing which is amazing and they put it in the rare books collection next to the Declaration of Independence next to a Gutenberg Bible these are the only living authors of a book in the rare books collection that means they can visit it for the rest of their lives they don't need an appointment they can bring their friends today they can bring their kids someday they can bring their grandkids today and say this is the book that i wrote that the New York Public Library thinks is one of the most important texts ever created in the history of humanity so that was an epic win for our players so what i'm what i hope to share with you today is that these 10 positive emotions that games provoke can help people strive to do things that would seem impossible otherwise whether it's making a political statement bringing two countries together with you know border volleyball or getting to write a book and be a published author in just one night and to collaborate with 499 other amazing people by the way two people who met that night at the first library game got married last year which is amazing i know we love it so you know try to remember these 10 positive emotions if you can't remember them just remember the faces of gamers and the opportunity that we have to bring people together in our spaces to become super empowered i would like to state for the record i've been telling people this for the last two years i would like to produce and develop my next game for an american theater i want to create my next game in a theater and for a theater so i hope to see many of these faces in theaters over the coming decades i'm going to be signing books outside now and i hope that you will come and talk to me and share your vision for the future of theater and play and games thank you so much i have to take a picture i'll show my husband thank you oh my god is that like the coolest thing you've ever seen in your life thank you jane that was fantastic like like she said she's going to be signing copies of her book reality is broken in the tcg bookstore in lounge right out