GAME

“GAME” highlights the communication between explicitly competitive performers and audience members. We set the stage as a type of game-show space featuring two overtly competitive ‘contestants’ and an alternative ‘game’ featuring hundreds of wooden blocks laid out as a tower-building task meant to entice audience ‘players.’ Sound was used to spur action on our part and also to signal the audience when to play and when to step away from the task. The setting was overtly absurd and meant to be slightly humorous. Humor and absurdity were used as an aesthetic counterpoint to the tension created through the actions of the performers and audience members.

As in game-shows, there were rounds, prizes, lighting and sound effects, and delineated time periods for playing. We developed the performance characters as figures with barely discernible psychologies that eventually unravel as each begins to lose control of the game. By the end, the internal qualities of these characters eclipses the focus on ‘winning’ as this unraveling takes place.