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BrainExplode! Audiences and Agency through the Appropriation of Video-game Structures

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The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology ((PSPT))

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Abstract

First performed at The Brick Theater, New York, as part of the Game Play festival 2011, Richard Lovejoy’s BrainExplode! was a theatrical production which combined the popular 1990s video-game genre of ‘adventure-gaming’ with live performance. The production promised to deliver a ‘fully interactive theatrical experience’ and stated that audience members would ‘navigate Ray [the protagonist] through a live-action adventure-game’ (The Brick Theater 2011). The piece was generally well received, one critic going so far as to state that ‘BrainExplode! represents a new standard from which all game influenced theater [sic] must be judged upon’ (Hawkins 2011).

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© 2015 Dan Bergin

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Bergin, D. (2015). BrainExplode! Audiences and Agency through the Appropriation of Video-game Structures. In: Causey, M., Meehan, E., O’Dwyer, N. (eds) The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology. Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438164_9

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