A [TEXT MESSAGE] TRANSMISSION FROM BEN HOLBROOK
Kepler’s Ark, Writing For The Stage, Guided Meditation, The Label Of ‘Sci-Fi,’ Optimistic Fiction, & One Change To The Timeline
A [BLANK] TRANSMISSION FROM… is a a text interview series in the format of A [BLANK] CONVERSATION WITH… at . Guests engage in a one-day conversation via their preferred mode of text-based communication, with no commitments to the length or frequency of their responses.
Welcome to this debut installment of the
text interview series A [BLANK] TRANSMISSION FROM…My first guest is prolific screen, stage, and audio writer,
—who crafted the hilarious and brilliantly constructed sci-fi audio series, Kepler’s Ark:Kepler’s Ark follows a crew of space-faring weirdos, as they embark on a mission to terraform and populate new worlds.
Describing himself as a “budding futurist ” who enjoys exploring our futures from a mythological perspective in his writing — Ben has also worked with Extrapolation Factory, co-owns Full Metal Workshop, and is an all around good guy to grab drinks with.
So, please enjoy our TEXT MESSAGE conversation.
TABLE OF CONVERSATION:
[Ben broke the (very bendable) rules and brought the conversation into a second day!]
Kepler’s Ark, Writing For The Stage, & Guided Meditation
The Label Of ‘Sci-Fi,’ Optimistic Sci-Fi, & One Change To The Timeline
LEGEND:
“֍” at the end of a post from one Person A means that the “╰┈➤” at the start of a post from Person B is in direct response
“≫” signifies that someone made a direct response to their own direct response
“⌛” means that you’re seeing something written later in the timeline for a better reading experience.
And a post that begins without one of those icons is new to the main feed.
Note: Since Tim and Ben are based in New York, each text is timestamped in Eastern Standard Time. However, certain reactions like “iPhone haha”s and ❤️s exist out of time. We have no way of retrospectively knowing exactly when those buttons were pressed. There have been minor adjustments of the text for clarity.
DAY 1 (Monday 2-26-2024)
Tim Barnes: (12:16PM) How’s it going?! I always say this, but you’re one of the busiest people that I know. Always working on something creative whether it’s a play, SCREEN play, or narrative sci-fi podcast like Kepler’s Ark. What keeps you going at such a consistent pace? Ben Holbrook: (2:26PM) I have so much fun when I’m telling stories, either in groups, or solo, I just love to do it. The more mediums I get to play with, the better. I think it also helps to revisit my artist statement and mission (which I think is more popular in the theatre world than the film world), which keeps me focused on why I do this and gives me a boost when I need motivation. [Tim gives this an iPhone "❤️"] Tim: (2:28PM) What goes into developing a project as expansive as Kepler's Ark? Were some of the themes and ideas brewing in your head for a while before you put pen to paper? Ben: (3:02PM) Developing Kepler’s Ark took a lot of world building. I wanted a crew that was not only racially diverse, but I wanted their perspectives and customs to reflect a difference beyond racial and gender identity. What are the Martian and Lunar perspectives on cultural appropriation? How do politics play out amongst a small crew with such big differences, but a strong devotion to their mission? Then I had to sit down and start thinking about the universe itself. What kind of universe is this? Is it cold and chaotic like”Rick and Morty,” political and enlightened like “Star Trek,” or warm and fuzzy like “Steven Universe?” I settled on wanting to create a universe that was, in a way, very alive and I carried that as one of my themes the whole way during development. How do we redefine life when we’re faced with organisms and experiences that turn our ideas of life on its head. If we get the opportunity to continue writing it, I’d love to keep exploring that. Luckily I was also writing a comedy, so some of the ideas and the tech could be absurd, but I still wanted it all to belong in this universe, so there were rules I’d try to stick to. (3:07PM) And other themes came up once I started writing. Themes of found family and how that manifests. Themes of classism amongst the world’s best and brightest, I was even playing with having a running joke where President Kanye would be regularly referred to as one of the characters’ historical heroes, but there came a point where that idea stopped being funny 🙃 Tim: (3:18PM) That reminds me of the Elon Musk reference in Star Trek: Discovery 😬. You referenced Star Trek, Rick and Morty and Steven Universe as potential tonal lane — and it feels like any series about interpersonal dynamics on a spacecraft will be compared to Star Trek. Such comparisons could intimidate artists from exploring similar lanes. Do you avoid certain shows and books when you’re in the writing process to avoid creative overlap? Ben: (3:37PM) Nah, if anything, I intentionally go to them not just to see what others have done, but also to see what I can do differently. If you’re writing about space, you’re always going to get compared to Star Trek or Star Wars, it’s inevitable, because of the associative human brain, but I think that thorough, well conceived and researched world building will always yield a result that feels more original, because your world will be a reflection of you and not Gene Roddenberry. Those story worlds reflect our inner worlds if we let them. Tim: (4:27PM) How versed were you in the audio space before developing Kepler? Ben: (4:33PM) Not at all. I had to learn everything from scratch. The biggest (and honestly most fun) challenge was learning how to tell a story to an audience without relying on visuals. It’s the opposite of the show, don’t tell ethos of screenwriting and a lot of people have found fun and creative ways to do it. Sitting with the sound designers and talking through what certain creatures, or environments sounded like was so fun. Each character and room on the ship has its own signature sound and I also wanted to have a narrator, who’s also a character in the show. Narrators, reliable, or unreliable can be very fun. Tim: (4:51PM) I used to host and edit a sound scaping storytelling podcast and one of the things I learned was “when in doubt, just add wind.” Which, I suppose is useless in a story that takes place on a space ship. I’ve had a similar learning curve diving into prose. Has the Kepler experience influenced your work outside of audio — stage plays for instance? Ben: (5:11PM) I always tell writers, if they really want to challenge themselves, explore with form and experiment, write for the stage. People who write for the stage are constantly pushing themselves to innovate in their storytelling like no one else (because the audiences demand it) so I think it was the opposite, a lot of devices and tactics I’d used for theatrical writing found themselves in my audio story. One thing I did take from Kepler’s Ark, however, was the impact of an immersive soundscape. I haven’t used that in live theatre yet, but I’m planning to and I have used it in a theatrical guided meditation I created as an experiment during the pandemic. Tim: (5:34PM) Woah, what is theatrical guided meditation? Ben: (5:58PM) Haha, i got irritated by how people were still trying to either do in-person, socially distanced theatre, or plays on zoom (during the pandemic, like winter 2020)and I thought that I’d love to create something that people could use on their own to cultivate an inner theatre in their imaginations. Something truly made for people who were in quarantine. So for the Exponential Festival, which is a really cool experimental theatre festival in New York, I decided that I wanted to try to embed a short play inside of a guided meditation as an experiment. So I learned how guided meditations and binaural beats worked and I got some collaborators together and I created an audio piece that started out as a standard breathing exercise and then it guides you through visualizing yourself inside of a theater seeing people, finding your seat and watching a play, all inside of your mind. A play that feels like a dream. It was a really cool experiment, I got some great feedback. I really want to take some time and keep experimenting with it, because I think there’s something there that could be really, really special. Tim: (6:44PM) You describing this made me realize you really are a mad scientist of sorts. What percentage of your work would you say has an experimental element? ֍ (8:02PM) And in case we run out of time today, what’s some of your favorite sci-fi of all time? And what sci-fi are you consuming at the moment? ֍֍ Ben: ╰┈➤ (8:37PM) Maybe 30%? I don’t really get the chance to do a lot of experimenting with commissions, or collaborations, which is fine with me. I know a lot of theatre and film is profit driven so there are formulas that people tend to stick to and deviating from that makes people nervous. They feel the known way is the right way, so it can be less favorable to be a mad scientist in that environment. Also in a writer’s room, you’re trying less to experiment and more to contribute and help shape the story that’s already there, so I don’t jump into those environments thinking about how I can shake up the status quo, I just try to be a good teammate and bring my best ideas for that specific project. ╰┈➤╰┈➤ (8:44PM) For all time, “Children of Men” is such a fantastic film. That and the director’s cut of the original “Alien” are 2 of my very favorites. “Star Trek The Next Generation” of course, “Sunshine”, “Cowboy Bebop” (the anime, not the live action), and “Akira” just to name a few. Recently, “Scavengers Reign” really blew me away. It’s just brilliant on so many levels. (9:04PM) We can’t run out of time! This is fun! (10:20PM) If you’ve already turned in and you want to ask a few more, I’m more than down to keep going tomorrow.
DAY 2 (Monday 2-27-2024)
Tim: (11:19AM) Yes! Let’s continue! Just a few more questions left, lol. I went to bed uncharacteristically early yesterday. Ben: (11:25AM) Haha cool Tim: (11:32AM) You were one of the first people to tell me about Scavenger Reign. And I love it! But, honestly (and sadly) haven’t finished it. Party because it’s a show that requires both my undivided attention and patience. You often post these timelapse videos of yourself writing, which makes it seem like you can readily access a level of zen and consistency in your craft. Is that true? What role do those videos play in keeping yourself accountable to the work of writing?
Scavengers Reign (2023)
Ben: (11:45AM) You nailed it, that’s exactly why I make those videos. If there’s a camera on me I tend to focus better because there’s a sense of accountability knowing that I don’t want to post a video of me staring into space for 3 hours. I’m a fast writer for sure, but starting the beginning of a project can involve a lot of time just sitting and listening to music and visualizing until you see what works best. If the project is totally original and not a commission, there’s a chance that it’ll roll around in my head for years, just growing, until it feels heavy/substantial enough to put pen to paper. If it’s a commission, or collaboration I still think the majority of that time is spent outlining and visualizing and brainstorming, which can take days, or weeks, but once a project gets rolling I can access that zen state, or flow state, or whatever you want to call it (I think I just call it my rhythm) pretty easily. I create playlists that act as the soundtrack for the piece and spend all day thinking about it, so it’s like I live in that world and can hop in anytime. It also helps if i’ve kept up with my daily practice, so that my body can easily slip into writing mode. Otherwise I usually need a day, just to exorcise the craziness from New York City and the noisiness of social media from my brain, so I can focus. Tim: (11:50AM) What role do you see the genre of science fiction playing in your career? Would you be fine with that stamp being placed on you? “Ben Holbrook: sci-fi writer” etc? Ben: (12:19PM) I write a lot of different genres and I’m sure I’ll continue to do so, I love writing drama, comedy, dark comedy, fantasy, all of it, but as far as my personal mission as a writer is concerned, sci-fi is a big part of it. Especially optimistic sci-fi. Human beings are a monkey see, monkey do species, we mimic a lot of what we see on screens. There’s a ton of dystopian, or disaster based science fiction out there, which I understand, writers are always looking for higher stakes, but I think that mentality has permeated through society. A lot of people seem to think that dystopia is inevitable and it’s not. Star Trek is so popular, because it gives people a future they want to be a part of and an ideal to strive for. Stacey Abrams is a Trekkie, she even played the president of Earth in a new season, I love that and I think it heavily influenced her optimism and work ethic when it came to changing the way people voted in Georgia. Star Trek fans invented smart phones, automatic doors, and medical imaging devices, because they saw a world in which these things contributed and wanted to manifest them in our world. I think people need more examples for how we can create a future that works, which is way, way harder to write than dystopia, because we’ve never seen it. We’ve seen the world end many times. Several ethnic groups are experiencing the ending of their worlds right now, just like so many groups during the imperialist heyday, so we’re very familiar with what it looks like, adding zombies, robots, or aliens to that mix is light work. Our minds are primed for a bad future and people are all too ready to manifest that. A future where everything works properly though? Utilities, government, social systems, environmental regulations? That means you have to actually solve problems as a writer, instead of creating new ones (or more negative technologies for companies to copy), which requires a lot more imagination and research. Of course, there can still be stakes and drama in that world, because we’re human, we’ll always have grievances, there will always be problems to solve, but I love the idea of creating something that inspires the next Stacey Abrams, or the next great inventor to say “oh yeah, this can be good, the story of humanity doesn’t have to end in tragedy.” (12:27PM) So you can call me a sci-fi writer or a mad scientist. I’m down with both. Tim: (6:40PM) Sorry about the delay! Been insanely busy. But damn, you know how to write one hell of a final statement. Ben: (6:40PM) Is that the final statement? (6:41PM) I’m good with it Tim: (6:41PM) Hahaha, it feels like a perfect place to end Ben: (6:44PM) This was a lot of fun. It actually helped me focus a lot of my own views Tim: (6:47PM) Wait! One last question. If you could change one thing in our current timeline, what would it be? (6:52PM) I know that’s a tough one. But you can keep it jokey if you’d like. Or focus on one small detail that would have a massive ripple effect Ben: (7:13PM) Okay, hmm (7:21PM) This is a tough one. Every time i think of a dictator I would erase, I end up thinking about the circumstances and people who made him and how someone else would’ve done something just as bad. So I’m going to go soft and say I wish that the national endowment for the arts had remained strong. Oh damn, but I could also create a universe where Kobe stayed on the hornets after being drafted instead of being traded to the lakers. oh wait. No. Crack. Crack and the whole conspiracy behind it would’ve never happened. I think they, but damn. Those would’ve been some good years in Charlotte. (7:21PM) That** not they. Tim: (7:34PM) Perfect. Thanks again for doing this! Ben: (7:35PM) It was fun!
END OF INTERVIEW
Craving more? Check out some of the other text interviews at here or listen to episodes of my You Are The Genre podcast!
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