Needing a way to help more your imagination flow and to see more clearly how a performance or other arts project will work out. Story boarding works really well not just for the film industry, where it first was developed. It can be adapted for theatre, for novel writing stories, plays and even for designing a creative website to market your art work or productions.

Story boarding, first developed by Walt Disney, is used in the film industry to pre- visualize the scenes of a movie by showing a layout of events as it will be seen through the eyes of a camera. Others have adapted it for different media, such as the design phase of web sites and other interactive projects.

A number of puppetry artists I know use it when designing their shows. I found it very useful when I was working on writing and staging my play “The Sorrowkeeper.”  Since I was adapting it from a short story I had written earlier, it allowed me to translate the story to the stage and visualize the scenes.

Not only did I do drawings of the scenes, I also added words to my story board to convey the atmosphere, and the sounds and the music I  wanted.

In the performance we were integrating ritual, dance, theatre, live music, masks and puppets. Many of the actors had to play multiple roles. Story boarding really helped me see how the different elements of the production would weave together, to visualize the rhythm of the play, and to plan scenes that would work.

So if you are planning a creative project, consider how you might adapt story boarding to the media you are working with, and use it to both plan your production and stimulate your imagination.