Protopia: A New Horizon for Screenwriters
Published in SCRIPT Magazine 09.24.24
As a writer and filmmaker, I am deeply passionate about creating stories that inspire us to imagine better futures. But it wasn’t always like that — the first project I produced was a dystopian sci-fi webseries, and the first short film I wrote + directed was a cautionary tale about A.I. and social media. But a year before the pandemic I noticed how apocalyptic stories were seemingly everywhere, that there were no stories pointing to a future that we could be hopeful about (and this was when climate change was barely a blip on the public radar so you can imagine the ‘gloom & doom’ now). Instead, I started doing a deep dive into finding and creating stories that eschewed dystopian tropes and traditional structures of ‘The Heroes Journey’. I looked to innovations on the horizon and ideas of collective protagonists, inspired by my love of ‘entanglement’ in quantum physics. It changed everything.
I rediscovered the fierce power of storytelling, not only to change hearts and minds, but to lay out a blueprint for a future that we might actually like to inhabit, even amidst the deluge of challenges we face.
Thus, I’m excited to be able to share the article I wrote for SCRIPT Magazine:
This new piece explores the idea of Protopias (progressively better futures, coined by Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly) and how screenwriters (or anyone who crafts a forward looking narrative) can help shape a world where hope is on the horizon. I share this here as thousands have been devestated by Hurricane Helene, with millions more now in the path of Hurricane Milton. The climate crisis is no longer our future problem. Which makes it even more pressing to imagine futures where we collectively unite to tackle the challenges at hand, buoyed by innovations and inspired by our shared journey on this incredible planet. Let’s use the power of storytelling to envision and help build the futures we are desperate to see. I do hope you can check out the piece.
