Storytelling is fundamental to being human: it's how we share our experiences, learn from our past, and imagine our future. With the establishment of the Center for Future Storytelling, the Media Lab is rethinking what "storytelling" will be in the 21st century. The Center will take a dynamic new approach to storytelling, developing new creative methods, technologies, and learning programs that recognize and respond to the changing communications landscape. The Center will examine ways for transforming storytelling into social experiences, creating expressive tools for the audience and enabling people from all walks of life to embellish and integrate stories into their lives, making tomorrow's stories more interactive, creative, democratized, and improvisational. It will seek to bridge the real and the virtual, creating tools for both adults and children that allow stories to incorporate synthetic characters and actors such as robots. It will also pioneer new imaging technologies, from new systems for movement capture, to "morphable" movie studios that allow one physical space to represent a variety of settings.