We’re back again: on June 16 at The Book Club in Shoreditch, Future Human presents Immersion Drama, the fifth outing for London’s freshest and least reverent talk event. Along with expert guests, an inquisitive audience and a well-stocked bar, we’ll be discussing how storytelling and narrative is changing in a digitally connected world.

Avatar raised the bar on what audiences expect from movie blockbusters – now we want to be truly surrounded by other worlds and to be taken on dizzying ‘rides’ from the comfort of multiplex auditoria. But James Cameron’s space opera is merely the most high profile example of a wider paradigm shift in 21st century storytelling.

Videogames with thousands of potential narrative strands played on consoles more powerful than home computers; theatre productions with the audience as performers; online soap operas starring social networking profiles – these are just some of the possibilities being explored by modern storytellers. And with the general population flocking to purchase ‘always on’ smartphones and GPS-enabled mobile Internet devices, the potential for creating entirely new categories of narrative entertainment is huge.

Join us at The Book Club for a look at how this is happening, and how dramatic storytelling is breaking free of celluloid, stage and paper to innovate new forms that place you at the heart of the action. Unlike many lecture and talk events, you’ll be able to contribute throughout, both with your own questions and via our live Twitter feed.

Our guests are Dan Hon, co-founder of award-winning multi-platform storytellers Six To Start, who have made everything from treasure hunts for the band Muse to Channel 4’s social networking game/cautionary tale Smokescreen; Jade Tidy, producer of episodic murder-mystery PS3 game Blue Toad Murder Files; and Tim Jones, producer at interactive theatre troupe Coney, who created the ‘play without actors’ A Small Town Anywhere as well as the forthcoming 3D-audio game Papa Sangre.

Head over here to buy tickets, and we look forward to seeing you for a night of questions, answers, thoughts, random tangents, and medium-to-hard drinking…