A theatrical game for strong nerves: In Lessons of Leaking, you become a potential whistleblower in a dark, futuristic scenario.
Germany in 2021. A couple of days before the people vote on leaving an estranged European Union, a young PR agent gets hold of top secret information. Its publication would have shocking consequences for Europe as a whole.
To leak or not to leak?
The audience enacts a political thriller and makes wide-ranging decisions between the conflicting priorities of democracy, transparency, freedom of speech and manipulation.
What would you choose?
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Photo: © machina eX
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Photo: © machina eX
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Photo: © machina eX
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Photo: © machina eX
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Photo: © machina eX
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Photo: © machina eX
For several years now, media-theatre collective machina eX has been working on translating the aesthetics and narratives of computer games to the theatre. The group creates highly technically savvy and detailed point and click adventures in which audience members are tasked with saving the world by solving logic and moral riddles.
In-keeping with Transform Festival's exploration of the political and social consequences of digitalisation, in the group’s latest game, the audience becomes potential whistleblowers.
About machina eX
machina eX is a group of young media and theatre artists designing computer games in real life environments, Point ‘n’ Click Adventures within the graphics of reality. Blending scenic dramaturgy with the power of digital gaming principles, machina ex enchants performers and players alike and turns theatrical stages into fantastical worlds, in which rooms, objects and people interact are able to interact with each other.
They design immersive experiences somewhere between computer game, theatre and interactive installation. Within a room equipped with electronic sensors, human actors and analog items the player gets thrown directly into the game universe. Doors can be opened for real. Lights can be switched on and off. Anything can be touched, tested, used, collected and combined in order to test the reaction of the room and the characters in it. In these complex paradox metaworlds illusion is unbroken for the moment.
Their players grow together as a group and experience the story by solving the puzzles they are prompted with along the way. Collectively they plunge into the world of the game and find themselves amidst the story that does not develop without their own initiative: They follow the performers – the “avatars” – through true to life designed rooms, explore drawers and cabinets, solve the puzzles and make decisions that trigger events and have major consequences for the developing story.
Awards
machina eX's second adventure, 15’000 GRAY has been awarded with the jury prize of the 100° festival Berlin 2011, nominated for the Best OFF festival in Hannover 2011 and amongst other festivals was invited to the Impulse festival in Düsseldorf 2011, the Körber Studio in Hamburg 2012 and the Donau festival in Krems, Austria 2012.
In 2012 machina eX was chosen for a two year residency by the Doppelpass Fonds of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes in cooperation with the FFT Düsseldorf.
Source: machinaex.de
Lessons of Leaking was produced for EUROPOLY, a European project for theatre and film by the Goethe-Institut in cooperation with Munich Kammerspiele, Onassis Cultural Centre Athens, Sirenos-Vilnius International Festival, Teatro Maria Matos Lisbon and Tiger Dublin Fringe, in co-operation with Allianz Cultural Foundation. Performances at Transform 17 made possible by the Goethe-Institut London and Goethe-Institut Vilnius.
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