Photos by Elisabeth Ross
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| Jeff Emrich as Steve and Avonique Tipsword as Chelsea |
When you sit down in the theater, you’re confronted by a very simple set. Two black flats with a white screen between them, and three black acting cubes. As you will discover, this is more than enough to draw you in to the show. Once the lights go down and the show begins, a very different kind of staging emerges. There are ten scenes, each of which has a different set which are photographic backgrounds projected on to the white screen. Ominous music plays underneath each scene, sometimes mixed with video game sounds. The lighting is harsh and white, mainly projected from the rear sides rather than the standard front and front side projected lighting common to most productions. A narrator in a suit (John Crosheck) steps forward and begins to speak, but he is not your standard narrator. He doesn't tell you anything about what has happened before, or what is about to happen, or who the characters are, or anything you might have come to expect from narration. Those in the audience who are video game aficionados will recognize it as something known as a walk-through, a set of instructions set down by video game developers or players who have completed a game to help new players through it. The effect of all of this is to give the audience notice that we are now in a video game world.
