PuSh Festival 2024: asses.masses

Tickets

Cost: $18.59
Find tickets: here

This is gaming as performance; an immersive, cheeky, and highly original work. Brave spectators take turns at the controller to lead the herd through a post-Industrial society, where asses are valued more for their hides than their potential.

The unemployed donkeys have one demand: the humans must surrender their machines and give all donkeys their jobs back. But revolution is never easy!

asses.masses is a custom-made video game about labour, technophobia and sharing the load of revolution, designed to be played from beginning to end in a live theatre. This is gaming as performance; an immersive, cheeky and highly original work. Brave spectators take turns at the controller to lead the herd through a post-Industrial society, where asses are valued more for their hides than their potential.

Confronting automation driven job loss, nostalgia as a barrier to progress, and the role of technology in adaptation, we are encouraged to find space between the work that defines us and the play that frees us. asses.masses is Animal Farm meets Pokémon meets Final Fantasy: as exciting in form as it is in content. No previous gaming (or donkey) experience required.

Sending an audience member up to that podium is a sign of trust, and that faith creates a sense of responsibility to the “herd” that is extremely affective for the audience player. To agree to make decisions on behalf of the group is a brave thing… as a collective we quite quickly set a tone where folks felt comfortable shouting out suggestions and tips to the player at the front […] Even though the controller is in their hands, we are working together. - Charlotte Dorey, PLAY: The Blog
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