Participate collectively in a video game at the theater: it is this atypical experience that invites you asses.masses, at the TransAmériques Festival. Audience members serve as performers in this interactive production, created by two interdisciplinary artists from Vancouver. “It’s a long-standing practice for both of us, working with games, participation and original mediums,” explains Milton Lim. Because we challenge the idea of a passive spectator, who is just watching a spectacle unfold. »
If this medium is sometimes devalued, certain video games can “be considered art,” he adds. And like theatrical stories, their plot contains dramatic arcs. The duo therefore wrote an epic story, full of emotion and drama, for their game. We see a group of donkeys trying to get back their work, now done by machines in a post-industrial world.
This unfairly depreciated beast has emerged as an interesting figure to examine the state of work in the 21st century.e century. And symbolize the condition of manual workers, crushed by the technological revolution. “In the history of art and literature, donkeys have been represented as stupid, or stubborn, or lazy, when in fact they are a very intelligent animal,” explains Patrick Blenkarn. And they were often associated with the working class, which was a criticism of human workers more than the animal. » These types of labor have similarly been “erased from many of our urban spaces, especially in the highly developed West.”
The show focuses on what takes place both in the room and in the story on the screen: the herd of virtual donkeys who must get along in order to organize their first demonstration echoes the collective experience that the spectators go through .
On the Centaur stage, a controller will be lit. And the game begins when a person emerges from the audience to take control. “The player will have to accomplish tasks, resolve challenges,” describes Blenkarn. This person may not be the best person to do it. » We will then perhaps see her asking the rest of the public for help. Or another spectator will offer to take over…
There are no rules dictating who can lead the game or for how long. But the context is conducive, he says, to “a collaborative social organization — a beautiful muscle that must continue to be trained”! The way the public organizes itself often proves “inspiring”. “We have the ability to listen to each other and share power. This is what the donkeys in the story are trying to figure out. And this is also what humans come to grasp when playing asses.masses. »
If desired, the viewer can simply watch. Methods of participation vary during the show. “There were people saying, ‘My God, the player is doing terribly,’” Blenkarn said. And the question is always: what’s stopping you from participating? To speak up and make a contribution to the group? » An attitude that we often have towards politics: criticizing without getting involved. This is one of the elements that the show makes us think about.
Thanks to asses.masses, Lim adds, viewers “can see what it means to stand up and take power.” “They know they have the same responsibility as everyone else in the audience. I think that the contexts where we feel this way today are rare. But that’s the reality: we all have the ability to stand up and take charge. And to be more responsible for each other. »
Encounter
Available in ten episodes, of varying length depending on the audience’s choices, the epic extends over approximately seven and a half hours. “The game is designed to create lots of moments for exploring subplots,” explains Patrick Blenkarn. Because duration is one of the most important elements that video games cultivate. » Time favors the deepening of links, with the characters, but also with other players.
asses.masses therefore facilitates a social encounter that the theater does not often offer, “because of its infrastructure and the cultural habits that we have developed, notes Milton Lim: let’s sit in the dark looking in the same direction, and not talk to each other not (laughs). Most audiences go home after the theater and don’t really talk about the show, how it affected them.” However, it is impossible not to talk about it during the performance, interspersed with four intermissions, where “delicious food” will be served. The tandem wanted to create an event sensation, and the feeling of being welcomed into a friend’s house. For its designers, this session of gaming is therefore totally theatrical. They are happy to have succeeded in attracting an audience who had never seen the theater as a cultural space intended for them.
Every show is different. And public reactions in Vancouver, Toronto and Buenos Aires highlighted cultural differences. Completely composed of subtitles, the show can be easily adapted into other languages. The duo is very excited by the prospect of discovering it for the first time in a French-speaking context, with a “100% unique” version designed for this specific cultural space. Gilles Poulin-Denis’ translation is very funny, it takes advantage of all the possibilities of French for puns, assures Patrick Blenkarn. And we know that there is a strong history of social debates in French-speaking cultures.”
The representations ofasses.masses can become very lively. “It’s a reminder to us that yes, we have all these serious, intellectual questions about political assemblies, the future of technology and workers,” says Milton Lim. But we can question these themes while having fun. »