MENTORS & PROGRAM

Sarah Grochala​

Sarah is a multi-award winning playwright based in London. 
She is best known for her ice&fire/Amnesty Award-winning play S-27. Her latest play, Intelligence, won the 2023 Women’s Prize for Playwriting, and its world premiere is currently in development in the UK. Her earlier play, Waiting for Romeo, won the 2015 Ekin Yazın Dostları Theatre Award for Best Play.
In addition to playwriting, Sarah writes across various media. Her TV drama pilot, Vindication, was a semifinalist at the 2024 Austin Film Festival and The Writers Lab US. She also regularly writes audio drama episodes of Dr Who. As an associate artist with Headlong, she led their digital theatre initiatives, curating and collaborating on the creation of apps, installations, and games.
Sarah currently leads the MA/MFA Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

The Storyteller’s Toolkit
​How do you craft a story that captivates your audience and takes them on an unforgettable journey? This workshop delves into the fundamental structures of storytelling and provides practical tools for building compelling and dynamic narratives.
We will explore why story structures remain as relevant and essential today as ever. Key topics will include dramatic action, scene and plot structure, character development, world-building, and integrating theme. Additionally, we will examine how traditional storytelling frameworks are being re-invented and re-thought in our digitised and globalised world of hyperlinked, multi-perspective and fragmented narratives.

Frances Vieras Blanc​

Frances is co-founder of Eat the Cake Studio in Paris. With decades of experience in a wide range of creative fields, Frances is passionate about creating captivating and dynamic narrative worlds that inspire engagement and curiosity. Fascinated by history and determined to bring to the fore remarkable women of the past, she is driven by the desire to inspire extraordinary experiences through the magic of storytelling and immersion. As a Founding Member of the World Experience Organization (WXO) and the JeDI collective, her work is recognized internationally. A graduate of the College of Extraordinary Experiences, she excels in the creation and facilitation of immersive experiences. She is also very proud of her role as co-designer and co-producer of the Journées de l'Immersif, the largest annual gathering of the immersive industry in France. Creator, scriptwriter, entrepreneur and even mixologist... Her atypical career path has made her versatile, curious and always ready for a challenge!

Unleash the Power of Immersion!
Dive into an intensive hands-on workshop exploring storytelling, world-building, and interactive experience design. Discover how to craft compelling multi-format narratives, activate the senses, and build rich, interactive universes. Using frameworks like the 5Es, Primal Branding, and the Magic Circle, you'll design immersive experiences that engage participants making them a stakeholder in the story.  Across two dynamic days, you'll explore multi-sensory storytelling, audience participation, and experience architecture. Through co-creative teamwork, you’ll prototype and present a mini immersive experience, applying everything you’ve learned. Get ready to transform ideas into living, breathing worlds—where stories don’t just unfold, they are lived!

Dan Barnard​

​Dan is joint lead artist of Digital Story Studio Fast Familiar and a doctoral researcher in the Informatics Department at the University of Sussex. For a decade he was a Senior Lecturer at London South Bank University, where he taught Multimedia Performance and led the Digital Performance research group. Dan is currently a member of the Association for Research in Interactive Digital Narratives (ARDIN).
Fast Familiar’s recent work includes The Acquisitions Panel, which received a Jury Special mention at Sheffield Doc Fest 2022 and won the Activist Museum Award, The Curse of the Burial Dagger, which won Best Mystery Game at the Bullseye Awards, Do What You Must, which was selected to be part of the Official Cultural Programme at COP26 and The Evidence Chamber, which was described by the New York Times as “an especially successful way for theater to be enjoyed via a laptop.” Their piece Smoking Gun was selected to be part of the EU VERTIGO STARTS project and was chosen by The Financial Times as one of their “Top ten dramas to enjoy at home” during the COVID 19 Lockdown.
 
Designing Interactive Digital Stories
In this workshop we will explore how to create storytelling experiences that use digital technology to place the audience member at the heart of the experience. What can the addition of digital elements such as AR, VR, text messages, automated phone calls, projection, digital voting, and alternate reality games do to make stories more immersive or pervasive? What happens to stories when they move from conventional media, to take place on the streets of the city or on your smartphone?
The participants will learn some of Fast Familiar’s Dos and Don’ts of creating interactive digital stories and our ideation processes. We will also explore how to build on and enrich the ideas you developed earlier during the course of SSB by incorporating digital elements.

JANA ROMANOVA​

Jana is a multidisciplinary artist. She works with performance, games, and collective storytelling as tools for research, creating meaningful connections, and transformation. Inspired by her background in journalism and visual arts, she designs and facilitates LARPs (live-action role plays) and social games in physical spaces as part of her art practice. She regularly teaches LARP design and playful experiences at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Wageningen University, ArtEz, and iii in the Netherlands.
 
Seeing Spaces: Designing Site-specific Role-playing Games
What if a bench in the park is a portal to another universe? What if a stage left behind by the summer festival is a meeting place for ghostly singers? What if an abandoned hospital is an arena for a secret survival game? Seeing Spaces is a workshop about uncovering the hidden narratives of physical places and reimagining them as immersive storytelling experiences.
In this session, we’ll transform existing locations into dynamic settings for site-specific role-playing games. Building upon each space’s unique features that encourage specific interactions and potential, we’ll write short dramatic stories and characters that give these spaces new dimensions—then step into these worlds to make them come alive.

DIMITAR UZUNOV​

Dimitar is a director, producer and scriptwriter. In 2008 he founded Famille Mundi theatre company in Paris in which he has worked with artists from more than 20 countries. Dimitar is a co-founder of Sofia based Arte Urbana Collectif and  founder and director of Summer Scriptwriting Base, an immersive international summer school for the storytellers of tomorrow. He is the founder of the platform Theatre & Science and more recently coordinator of the European project Please ASK for producing science theatre, linking artists with scientists and science institutions.

Play Around with AI
In this workshop, we will experiment with various AI tools. Our goal will be to push the boundaries of creative collaboration between humans and machines. Participants will use AI to enhance and complement the outputs of other workshops in the SSB2025 program. Through hands-on activities, each participant will be encouraged to develop their own unique approach to AI-assisted creativity.
If technology is inevitable, why not embrace it? We will explore how we human talent and imagination can work in synergy with AI’s vast capabilities, while having fun all along the way!

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​Design by Arte Urbana Collectif