2006 Third Coast ShortDocs: 99 Ways To Tell a Radio Story

In 2006, the Third Coast Festival teamed up with cartoonist Matt Madden, and, in the spirit of his Oulipo-inspired book "99 Ways to tell a Story: Exercises in Style," dreamed up the 2006 Third Coast ShortDocs Challenge: 99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story. Together with Matt we designed a set of rules and invited any/everyone to submit short audio stories that followed them. Every submission had to:
- start with some manifestation of: "To begin with, they never got along."
- include a pre-recorded voice, rhythmic noise, and exclamation
- last exactly 2:30 min.

In the end, 101 stories from around the world were submitted to 99 Ways To Tell a Radio Story. Four were chosen as the 2006 ShortDocs, and were presented, with producers on-hand, at the opening session of the 2006 Third Coast Conference.