Same Title Different Story

By Jess D'Amico in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 11, 2007 6:10PM

What do get when you mix writers with improv actors with podcasts with open source programmers? Chris McAvoy, of TastebudChicago, gave us an answer, Same Title Different Story, a webzine of sorts through podcasts. The idea is similar to The First Line — give writers a common theme or idea, in this case a title, and let them have at it.

“I kind of stole the idea from The Dollar Store I think. I ended up writing a piece for them about a month ago. I think it’s good to have a reason to write amongst friends with deadlines, and I was trying to think of an idea for podcasts. We thought originally about podcasting TastebudChicago and I bought all this equipment and never used it. Oh yeah, and This American Life was a huge influence,” McAvoy says of his inspiration for Same Title.

The first title for the zine is The Time Lords. McAvoy says he comes up with the titles alongside Mission Improvable's Dennis O’Toole, who he categorizes as a sort of creative director and then quickly adds, “but titles are sort of boring.”

McAvoy says of the titles, Time Lords from a Harper's article, and the Second from Hemingway, “I try to keep them open ended — something that sounds cool, and short.”

Same Title's first two titles are currently in production, with thirteen episodes recorded. Of the two available for download, one is a slice-of-life story by local comedienne Molly Hale, and the other is a song by Chicago musician Miss Alex White.

Both are brief, and McAvoy hopes to keep future stories at about five-minute bites, but hasn’t set any limits to the artists he contacted about submitting work. McAvoy is planning to release eight stories per title.

In the works is a possible "radio show" live recording of the fourth title.

And no, until we brought it up to him, McAvoy hadn’t thought of the fact the Same Title Different Story had STDS as an acronym. But to that he says, “Dirty. What up.”

Our version of a Time Lord via robotson.