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Spoken Word Night

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Spoken Word Night is an event started by vid on the D'mala shard. The first meeting was held on March 8, 2006 and meetings were held almost every Wednesday night for two years. This weekly gathering was home to a "voice recommended but not required" policy, encouraging explorers to share poems, stories, songs, or just about anything that they'd like to share with an audience.

Most commonly, explorers would step up to the microphone to read their pieces, but could also use KI chat to broadcast their messages. Over it's lifetime, Spoken Word Night has been host to many original creations, as well as reimaginings of classics, or even unaltered readings. For the twenty-fifth meeting, some of the regulars came together to write, produce, and act out a theatrical play entitled "Tales from the DRC".

The event continued from D'mala to Myst Online: Uru Live, where it reached it's forty-ninth meeting, when the event took an official hiatus until the completion of Spoken Word Night 50. After a few weeks, it became clear that the hiatus would continue for an unknown amount of time, and so meetings still continued regularly during the hiatus, hosted by various regulars of the event. Jeff Lewis kept the event going most weeks, while vid took a break from hosting duty after over a year of running things. About two weeks before the closure of Myst Online: Uru Live, the Spoken Word Night 50 script was completed and the cast and crew spent the final week pulling long hours in order to prepare and promote the show. Spoken Word Night 50: Back to the Cavern was performed live in one of the neighborhood community rooms just hours before the closure of Myst Online: Uru Live (April 9th,2008).

A return in the recently opened MO:ULagain is planned. First day is TBA.

Contents

[edit] Spoken Word Night 25: Tales from the DRC

[edit] Summary

Tales from the DRC is an hour and a half long story, meant to lampoon the Prologue period. While it conveys the general idea of what happened during that time, it also serves as an extreme exaggeration of characters and events, as well as adding many completely fictional events.

The DRC, Dr. Watson, Marie Sutherland, Ikuro Kodama, Michael Engberg, and Victor Laxman have come together to restore an ancient underground civilization. But with a megalomaniac and a stoner for Restoration Engineers, pranksters run amok, and a blooming love affair in the council, can they pull it off without killing each other first? With tensions on the rise and hormones testing their better judgment, it's up to the DRC to keep things stable, or risk a collapse of the restoration.

[edit] Trivia

The "Grandpa vid" Prologue scene was completely unscripted. The scene was originally meant to be recorded as a disclaimer, but after vid recorded the scene and submitted it for approval, the response from Thend was "vid, we asked you for a disclaimer, and you told us about your kidneys". In the end, the recording was kept, and Ling recorded the disclaimer to fit into the scene.

All of the background voices in Scene 9 were performed by the actors of the show. Dalken Starbyne's "Explodes!", Thend's "Thend is here!", vid's "How I shoot book?!", Moietay's "I'm Tay!" and many others. The strange series of sounds towards the end of the scene that interrupts Marie and Watson's conversation is the audio rendition of Dalken's "Interpretive Dance" which of course cannot be seen on the audio release, and was unfortunately out of the camera's view for the video recordings.

Also in Scene 9 is the phrase "The gathered are known by their faces of stone, my butt!", which is meant to be a reference to Jeff Zandi's infamous phrase "The gathered are known by their faces of stone." from the Preafter adventure on the surface. The recording of Watson was also placed at the end of the teaser trailer.

During the "Cooking With Gehn" commercial, listeners are informed that the show airs just after "Steve Irwin's Camoudile Hunter". This segment was written before the untimely death of Steve Irwin, and there was discussion about whether to remove the piece or continue on with it. Eventually it was decided that the reference would remain in honor of Mr. Irwin's memory.

In Scene 23, Victor Laxman says the phrase "Alright, let's do this. VICTOOOOOOOR LAAAAAAXMAAAAAN!!!" in a homage to the "Leeroy Jenkins" incident of World of Warcraft infamy.

During Scene 26, Dr. Kodama says "They will find a way. They will make a home down here." This is a reference to an early tagline for Myst Online: Uru Live that stated "Destruction is coming. Find a way. Make a home."

[edit] "Spoken Word Night 25: Tales from the DRC" Credits

[edit] Voices

[edit] Production

[edit] Actors

[edit] SWN 25: Tales from the DRC Trailers

[edit] Media

  • Lemmings Da Bomb OC Remix - Da Bomb Inc. (OCRemix.org)
  • The Tanks Thunder - Maestro Rage (Newgrounds Audio Protal)
  • Dirty Laundry - David Michael Frank (The Mole Soundtrack)
  • Bahroian Rhapsody - Lyrics by Gondar, Sung by Thend, Dalken Starbyne, Gondar, and *Moietay (Based on Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen)
  • Sound Effects were taken from Freesound Project, Soundfishing, Virtual Gallery, and Freelandia
  • All other music, ambient sounds, and sound effects are from Uru, Riven, and Myst V: End of Ages

[edit] Spoken Word Night 50: Back to the Cavern

[edit] Summary

Back to the Cavern is about two hours long and tells an entirely new story set in the Until Uru period, drawing additional inspiration from D'mala and Myst Online: Uru Live. Back to the Cavern presents a hilariously implausible explanation of how both Uru expansions, the Until Uru shards, and the instancing of Myst Online: Uru Live all fit together, while also providing new insight on the events of Tales From the DRC.

Marie Sutherland, Ikuro Kodama, Michael Engberg, and Victor Laxman are back in action, proving that it takes more than a lack of money to keep the DRC out of the cavern! Months after blowing the restoration's resources on pizza, pranks, and safety restrictions, the team have managed to negotiate a new source of venture capital from Cate Alexander, breathing new life into the cavern. At first it seems as though Cate has saved the restoration project, but it quickly comes into question whether her priorities will match up with those of the DRC.

In case the situation wasn't stressful enough, a lone explorer attempting to recalibrate the Great Zero and a small group of rebellious bahro have crossed dimensions and opened a portal through time that could very well save the first restoration attempt from it's penniless fate! The DRC must figure out how to save the previous restoration while dodging Cate and her bodyguard Hugh, and avoid tearing a hole in space-time that you could drive a Zandoni through!

[edit] Trivia

Back to the Cavern took a full year to write, and was quickly cast, recorded, and edited during the week leading up to the closure of Myst Online: Uru Live. The live performance took place only hours before the game servers were shut down, with the auditorium filled with many explorers, a few ResEngs, and MarkD from Cyan.

Almost all of the on stage movement was improvised, as the extremely tight schedule had left no time for blocking and rehearsal.

Due to time constraints, Vortmax was unable to finish editing all of the audio before the show, and actually had to finish the last few scenes during the performance! As a result of this, Jeff Lewis acted as a Kodama stand-in during the show when Vortmax was too preoccupied to fill the role.

The "Grandpa vid" afterword was recorded the day of the performance and was only heard by vid and Vortmax until the show ended, surprising everyone with both vid and Grandpa vid speaking together.

Before this performance and despite being a Spoken Word Night regular, Whilyam had only spoken through the microphone a few times during the final "hiatus" meetings before Back to the Cavern. Upon hearing his voice, it was immediately clear that he'd be perfect for the role of LaTTIS.

The closing theme "Still Described" (a parody of Portal's "Still Alive") was originally written by vid for a few bittersweet laughs after the announcement of Myst Online: Uru Live's closure. However, after discovering the character of LaTTIS (A parody of the computer GlaDOS, also from Portal) in the Spoken Word Night 50 script, vid felt that it would be a very appropriate closing theme for the show, and insisted that it be used as such.

[edit] "Spoken Word Night 50: Back to the Cavern" Credits

[edit] Voices


[edit] Production

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