Why games are the new theatre

Gaming offers the performing arts a playful intervention, and the opportunity for participation instead of spectatorship.
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Pop Up Playground’s Outside: The Cloud. Photo by Sarah Walker.

During a recent visit to Melbourne, the French-Canadian playwright, actor and director Robert Lepage bemoaned the way the professional theatre industry has lost its sense of playfulness.

‘People are interested in acting and I don’t like “acting”. Well, not on the stage. And the playfulness that I’m talking about is not just playfulness amongst actors, it’s also between the audience and the actor … the player. And I think that’s kind of been evacuated from the stages in the 20th century,’ Lepage said in an appearance at the 2016 Melbourne Festival.

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Richard Watts is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM, and serves as the Chair of La Mama Theatre's volunteer Committee of Management. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and was awarded the status of Melbourne Fringe Living Legend in 2017. In 2020 he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. Most recently, Richard was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Green Room Awards Association in June 2021. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts