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Home , Bonnie Ross, Kellee Santiago, Niantic (company), Robin Hunicke, Thatgamecompany

Next on our stagE THE LITTLE FOXES OUR TBA MUSICAL! WAITING FOR NEXT MAY 14-JUNE 14 JULY 16-AUGUST 23 SEPTEMBER 24-OCTOBER 25 HIGHLIGHTS

A companion guide to

Coded written and directed by Kirsten Brandt

supported by Visionary Producers Nancy B. Coleman & Paul M. Resch

March 12- April 11, 2020 Synopsis

Jerrie was on her way to being a leader in the gaming industry, until a competitor armed with a legion of internet trolls launched an all-out assault on her, and she was forced into hiding. Now, she’s back with a hand-picked team and a plan to revolutionize virtual-reality gaming. If she can keep the trolls at bay and control over her staff, she might be able to dismantle the industry’s boys’ club. But when the virtual world begins to invade the real one, things get more surreal than she could have imagined.

Characters

Coded is set in the not-too-distant future in Silicon Valley. Here’s how playwright Kirsten Brandt describes the cast. Some actors also briefly play other characters as the story evolves.

Jerrie (Stephanie Whigham): Late 30s-early 40s. Founder of the gaming company ERDA, Creative director of The Room, which offers users the ability to program it to create any scenario, or to play one of ERDA’s games.

Ronnie (Chioma Agu): Mid-late 30s. Concept artist, an experienced art director and mother of three kids under 10.

Chris (Anne Younan): Late 40s, early 50s. Developer and tech lead of The Room. She wants to avoid the limelight.

Izzy (Ari Lagomarsino): 21, a game designer, Stanford dropout who dreams of going viral on YouTube.

Ashley (Alycia Adame): 23, narrative designer of The Room, a Twine game designer obsessed with constructing solid stories. Above: Ari Lagomarsino as Izzy. Previous page: Jerrie (Stephanie Whigham, center) with her team. From left, they are: Ashley (Alycia Adame), Izzy (Ari Lagomarsino), About the play and playwright Chris (Anne Younan) and Ronnie (Chioma Agu). All “Coded” photos are by Taylor Sanders.

At the start of Coded, Jerrie pitches her idea for The Room to a venture capitalist. Quite a few curve balls fly her way in the scene. Fortunately, when playwright Kirsten Brandt pitched her play ideas to City Lights Executive Artistic Director Lisa Mallette, the mood was a whole lot more collaborative.

Kirsten brought in several ideas: about the #MeToo movement, climate change, and others. The topic that she and Lisa kept coming back to was what it’s like for women facing sexism in Silicon Valley and the gaming industry in particular.

“It permeates just about everything, but people don’t know about it unless they’re in the industry,” Kirsten said.

Today, Kirsten has a script that blends the struggles of women game designers with the joy and wonder of creating games, and the camaraderie of a close-knit team. Along the way, the team even addresses some of the environmental issues she first raised, by creating a post-apocalyptic game, Earth Redux, that users can play inside The Room.

The Room offers its users the chance to explore infinite worlds and experiences through : solving a mystery, creating a work of art, processing anxieties, or learning how to do brain surgery. It also contains pre-created games that for users to explore The Room, so that it doesn’t daunt with a completely blank space. “There’s something beautiful about using the space therapeutically,” Kirsten said.

But as all good games must have conflict, life for women game creators can be far from rosy. A recent example was 2014’s Gamergate, a storm of trolling, harassment and threats against women game creators — and a culture war of sorts about who the “true” gamers really are. Game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu were targets, as was media critic Anita Sarkeesian.

Coded has many disturbing moments that call Gamergate to mind. In some cases, Kirsten actually made her play tamer than the reality.

In that light, the script’s instances of workplace camaraderie, fun banter and goofy humor are very much intentional, Kirsten said. “You have to have that lightness to see why people continue to do it even when they’re being attacked. What keeps them going is the act of creation.” Kirsten Brandt. There is also hope for the future in Coded’s youngest characters, Izzy and Ashley. While they are certainly troubled by the harassment, the two seem to see more possibility and hope for the future of their industry. “They do kind of roll with it a bit because they’re young, and because they also have a view of the future that is more open,” Kirsten said.

A fine example is in Kirsten’s own home, where her daughter aspires to be a game designer and seems unfazed by having been the only girl in her design class. This summer, she’s headed for game-design boot camp to learn character modeling. “I said, ‘You might be the only girl again.’ She said, ‘That’s OK.’”

Kirsten once was a gamer, back in junior high with her Commodore 64. But she remembers being told that gaming wasn’t really for girls, and today she doesn’t play that much.

It might be hard to find time. Besides being an interdisciplinary artist and award-winning playwright and director, Kirsten is an assistant professor of theater at San Jose State and an instigator for the Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival, of which Coded is a part. For six seasons, she was artistic director of the experimental theater company Sledgehammer Theatre in San Diego, where she directed several of her own plays. She was also associate artistic director at San Jose Rep, where the rock musical The Snow Queen first took the stage, with Kirsten as co-author.

Coded rehearsals have been a collaborative experience, with Kirsten delighted to see the actors taking more agency over their characters. She’s especially enjoyed the great conversation across the generations, both with characters and actors.

“We have Xers, one millennial, and a couple who are even younger,” she said. “When we think ‘gamers,’ we never think ‘women in the their 40s,’ and women in their 40s are indeed Ashley (Alycia Adame) and Jerrie (Stephanie Whigham) in a light moment at work. gamers.” REAL-LIFE HEROES: A Few Legendary women game creators

In addition to our badass cast of characters, there are so many real-life female heroes creating games. Trying to list them all would be an impossible task, but here’s a very small sample. Read on and get inspired!

Tracy Fullerton With her interest in the environment, Coded’s Jerrie probably loves playing Walden, a game. This innovative game takes players to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond in 1845 to follow in his footsteps of self-reliant living in the woods. Named “Game of the Year” at Games for Change 2017, Walden is but one of creation of Tracy Fullerton, an experimental game designer and educator, and director emerita of the USC Games program. Other titles from her research center The Game Innovation Lab include Cloud, flOw, Darfur is Dying and The Night Journey. She has also written the textbook “Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games.”

Roberta Williams Tracy Fullerton. A legend in adventure gaming, Roberta Williams was introduced to games in 1979 as a housewife whose husband, Ken, worked for a computer company. She fell hard for adventure gaming, but didn’t see enough titles out there, according to an MIT bio. So she wrote and designed Mystery House, a murder mystery game. Teaming up with her programmer husband, she made the game a reality. Soon their Sierra On-Line company was selling thousands of copies of Roberta’s games, including 1984’s iconic King’s Quest and the innovative 1995 game Phantasmagoria.

Bonnie Ross You may think of first-person shooters as games played by men, but there’s a powerful woman leading the bazillion-selling military / sci-fi franchise: Bonnie Ross. The game developer has been working in the industry since 1994 and is founder and head of (a division of ) as well as corporate vice president at . Fortune magazine has called her one of the 10 most powerful women in video games, and the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences named her to its hall of fame last year.

Kellee Santiago Designer, producer and cofounder/former president of indie studio , is now head of developer relations at , which The Mercury News recently described as “one of the Bay Area’s most promising, pioneering video game A photo from Bonnie Ross’ . companies.” Niantic’s titles include Pokemon Go and : Wizards Unite. “One of the things I love about games” like Pokemon Go, Santiago told the Merc, “is the way they can bring people together, break down walls between us and let us just be playful.” Kellee’s resume also includes cofounding , which helps fund the next big thing in independent games.

Robin Hunicke Another local on our list is , a U.C. Santa Cruz professor of Art and Design: Games and Playable Media, and Digital Art and New Media. She’s a huge advocate of diversity in games and art, and both Robin and Kellee Santiago were major forces behind the sweeping, beautiful game Journey at thatgamecompany. Since then, Robin cofounded the game studio Funomena. There, titles include Luna, a fable-style game about a bird trying to find its way home, rich with music and celestial puzzles. Robin Hunicke. Glossary

Not familiar with gaming lingo? Never fear: many of the terms are made clear in the script. And here’s more clarification.

NPC: Non-Player Character, kind of like a virtual bystander. No human players control this character, but he or she is part of the game world. (In a tabletop game, the runs the NPC.) The term “NPC” has also been used as an insult to call people brainwashed and unable to think for themselves.

MMO: Massively Multiplayer Online game that lets you play with people from all over. Think World of Warcraft or Eve.

Twine: Dream of designing an interactive-fiction game, but not a whiz at code? Developer Chris Klimas created the open-source, free tool Twine in 2009 to make it easier for everyone to create games. Indie games, many created by individuals rather than teams, thrive on Twine. And Twine creators are often women, which some men in the industry view as threats. (See the Gamergate entry below.) As the New York Times Magazine wrote: “The very nature of Twine poses and simple but deeply controversial question: Why shouldn’t more people get to be a part of games? Why shouldn’t everybody?”

Gamergate: In 2014, developer Zoë Quinn released the revolutionary Twine-created Depression Quest. A text-based game, it takes players into the mind of a person with clinical depression as the person chooses paths to get through life. Though the game caused some Young creators at Girls Make Games. This nonprofit and the San Jose Public Library Foundation are our partners for “Coded.” controversy, Quinn became the focus of a firestorm when an ex- boyfriend accused her of sleeping her way to positive reviews. As the Times Magazine put it, “The claim, though false, set off a wave of outrage that eventually escalated into a campaign against all the designers and critics who have argued for making gaming culture more inclusive.” Trolls targeted and threatened Quinn, and then other women game creators who dared to defend her or even write or joke about the controversy. Like Quinn, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian was attacked so vehemently she had to leave home.

Steam: Depression Quest was originally released through Steam, a gaming service where creators can publish and players and can download. Steam also has social-networking and video-streaming components. At one point in Coded, a character says snidely that without her, a particular game “would be on Steam for $9.99.”

Twitch: Looking for a really big community in the gaming world? You could do far worse than Twitch. Millions of people jump on this live streaming video platform to play, watch others play and talk about others playing. Twitch also streams content about other creative pursuits from game tutorials to live music broadcasts to sports.

Fortnite dances: Sure, you can blow people up in the multiplayer shooter game Fortnite. But why just celebrate a win quietly when your avatar can do the Electro Shuffle on top of the dude you just bested? The game is free, but you can buy snazzy avatar skins and trendy avatar dances (called “emotes” by those in the know).

Haptics: Think of it as “touch” technology. Haptic feedback in a game is something you can feel, like a VR glove that allows you to “feel” what a virtual object is like in your hand, or a controller or phone vibrating.

The Holodeck: One of the best things about the Star Trek universe. Stroll inside the holodeck (essentially a big room), and you’re immersed in one of an infinite number of virtual-reality worlds. You can be whoever you want in the holodeck; say, Sherlock Holmes or a film-noir gent. A National Guardsman training in a VR environment. Coded

written and directed by Kirsten Brandt

supported by Visionary Producers Nancy B. Coleman & Paul M. Resch

a proud participant in the Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival

City Lights presents Coded from March 12-April 11, 2020. Performances are Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. (no show March 15). The April 5 matinee will have American Sign Language interpreters. Need an interpreter on a different date? Email us at [email protected], and we will do our best to accommodate you. More about Coded: cltc.org.

Director: Kirsten Brandt

Assistant Directors: Savannah Garcia and Kudra Wagner

Production Manager/Technical Director/Scenic Designer: Ron Gasparinetti

Sound Designer: George Psarras Lighting Designer: John Bernard

Stage Manager: Michelle Singh Assistant Stage Manager: Amber Gebert-Goldsmith

Costume Designer: Alina Bokovikova Assistant Costume Designer: Kathleen Qiu

Props Designer: Miranda Whipple Fight Choreographer: Scott Cummins

Video/Projections Designer: Spenser Matubang Master Electrician: Joseph Hidde

Master Carpenter/Scenic Artist/Projections Board Operator: Paulino Deleal

Featuring: Stephanie Whigham, Anne Younan, Chioma Agu, Ari Lagomarsino and Alycia Adame

Special thanks to Compass Downtown Los Gatos for hosting our first photo shoot!

This issue of Highlights was researched and written by City Lights marketing director Rebecca Wallace. Read past issues, and a digital version of this publication, at cltc.org/highlights.