Staging Shakespeare in Social Games: Towards a Theory Of
Staging Shakespeare in Social Games: Towards a Theory of Theatrical Game Design JENNIFER ROBERTS-SMITH, SHAWN DESOUZA-COELHO, AND TOBY MALONE, UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO ABSTRACT | INTRODUCTION | VIRTUALITY, THEATRICALITY, AND THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY | THEATRICAL SIMULATION: GAMEPLAY, GAME WORLDS, AND SOCIAL GAMING | SIMULATING ONTOLOGICAL MULTIPLICATION: INTERPLAY | CODA: STAGING SHAKESPEARE IN SOCIAL MEDIA? | CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | NOTES | REFERENCES ABSTRACT This essay discusses the theoretical implications of a recent experiment with game-based social media to increase Shakespeare literacy in eleven to fifteen-year-olds. In collaboration with the Stratford Festival, we aimed to make the gameplay of our pilot, Staging Shakespeare, and the social space it generated, experientially theatrical in some way. While the pilot itself was not, in our view, successful, the design process helped us articulate a theory of theatricality grounded in the ontological complexity of theatrical things and the ontogenetic conditions of theatrical environments. Our conclusion is that literal simulations of Shakespeare's plays or of Shakespearean theater production may not be the richest way to teach Shakespeare through social games. Instead, we may need a design theory grounded in the adaptation of theatrical principles to electronic media, and perhaps a new aesthetic and even a rhetoric of gameplay only associatively related to Shakespeare. INTRODUCTION Staging Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet Edition) is the working title of the pilot for the first of a suite of Shakespeare-based games planned by the Gamifying Shakespeare project, a collaborative education- outreach initiative of the Stratford Festival (the largest theatrical institution in Canada), the University of Waterloo Games Institute, and commercial game development companies based in Ontario, Canada (including, for this game, Industry Corp.).
[Show full text]