Day 21: Rimini Protokoll – Best Before

Strong idea – audience has game controllers and ball avatars, while guided through a series of decisions,some of which affect your future action. Take heroin and weed early in the game and you’re debarred from political life. Don’t go to University,you earn less. Even cheating is explored. So far,so good, it was fun, especially for those who had never played a computer game before. I enjoyed seeing Polly Toynbee choosing to take heroin.

But, and it’s a large but, the presenters were low key Canadians who couldn’t carry it. Why have live theatre and edgy decision making, fronted by amateurs? It still defaulted to the old theatre idea that the performers were primary and audience secondary. In games, it’s the audience that is primary. To be fair this was about as good as I’ve seen in terms of technology and theatre, but it still had that element of ‘dads dancing at the disco’ feel.