Posted: April 28, 2021
When it comes to Greg Brownderville’s latest project, timing is everything.
The Dallas-based poet and director of Southern Methodist University’s creative writing program this year released Fire Bones, a digital dreamscape of audio, video, music, text and art. Created with smartphones in mind, it takes its audience on a magical journey through the Arkansas Delta, where Brownderville grew up. He calls it “the world’s first go-show,” a term he coined to signify its ability to travel with audiences on their phones.
“I wanted poetry to be a multisensory experience,” Brownderville says. “Different stories demand different forms of storytelling, and I was curious what would happen if you blended several at once.”
But if Brownderville had created the project when he first began imagining it in 2011, Fire Bones would look a lot different.
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In 2021, the “go-show” seems prescient. There’s no way Brownderville could have known 10 years ago that people would be binge-watching television on their phones or that podcasts would become this prevalent. A few years later, when he started drafting production plans, no one could’ve predicted that the show would debut to a world with limited access to movie theaters and performance venues.
But perhaps the greatest role that timing played in the trajectory of Fire Bones was in late 2015 when Brownderville met Bart Weiss, an award-winning local filmmaker and professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. Brownderville had just received generous funding from SMU but couldn’t find the right videographer; Weiss seemed to understand his vision for the project.
“I was really struck by how Greg’s mind works,” Weiss says. “Everything in this world is handmade, and language is key. There’s really a sense throughout that your attention will be rewarded.” READ MORE