The way we tell stories has naturally changed

since Aristotle defined the rules of tragedy

about 2,500 years ago.

According to him,

the role of storytelling is to mimic life and make us feel emotions.

And that's exactly what storytelling as we know it

has done very well since then.

But there is a dimension of life

that storytelling could never really reproduce.

It is the notion of choices.

Choices are a very important part of our lives.

We as individuals are defined by the choices we make.

Some of our decisions can have very significant consequences

and totally change the courses of our lives.

But in a play, a novel or a film,

the writer makes all the decisions in advance for the characters,

and as the audience,

we can only watch, passively,

the consequences of his decisions.

As a storyteller, I've always been fascinated

with the idea of recreating this notion of choices in fiction.

My dream was to put the audience in the shoes of the main protagonists,

let them make their own decisions,

and by doing so, let them tell their own stories.

Finding a way to achieve this is what I did in the past 20 years of my life.

Today, I would like to introduce you to this new way of telling stories,

a way that has interactivity at its heart.

Rather than exposing the theory behind it,

which could have been kind of abstract and probably a little bit boring,

I thought it would be a great opportunity to do a little experiment.

I would like you, the people here at TED,

to tell your own story.

So I came with an interactive scene that we are going to play together.

I've asked Vicky --

hello, Vicky --

to control the main character for us.

And your role -- you, the audience --

will be to make the choices.

So Vicky and I don't know what's going to happen,