Open Forum

Check out the International Museum Theatre Alliance (IMTAL). There are a bunch of different museums and cultural institutions mentioned on the website that use theatre and story to engage visitors. I'm at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and many of our programs integrate story. In particular, I'd say check out our historical enactor program. Other places to look into...Science Museum of Minnesota, Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Missouri History Museum, Museum of Science and Industry Chicago, Connor Prairie, and the list goes on! But, all use theatre and story to engage visitors. 

I love this question.  We use stories every day.  Stories define and communicate our experience, culture and our museums.  Stories connect us and (if you have been following the political primaries) can be used to divide us.  Our bi-weekly story times for children became so popular they are now offered by preregistration only.  Our Guides are trained as story tellers and listeners.  Our Annual Report is not just a collection of the necessary analytics and donor lists, it is packed with stories and images that will become a slice of history for our future colleagues.  When interviewing candidates for employment, at all levels, I will ask them "Tell us about a tree in your life, one that was important to you."  Everyone has a story about a tree in their life.  How they tell it, tells us about the person. Sharing it often puts them at ease, especially important in a group interview.  (We are an arboretum.  Someone in a time piece museum might ask, tell me about a timepiece in your life and I would expect they would get a story.) One of our recent story uses is our Arboretum Voices oral history program. http://www.business-services.upenn.edu/arboretum/about_arboretum_voices.shtml. Available on our website, we are going to move some of these stories into the garden as part of our digital interpretation strategy.  This year we will be adding more stories about garden features and plants made available through visitors' personal mobile devices and evaluating their impact.