GUN PLAY: theater about video games
Opening this Thursday at the Chocolate Factory in Queens, a theater group is going to "[blur] the line between real and imagined violence" with their performance piece, GUN PLAY. The New York Times reports the "the cast and crew spent hours playing Xbox titles, [as] part of their research into how to move like futuristic fighters or California carjackers." They practiced the unnatural and affected way video game characters behaved, including walking, standing, stomping, shooting, and dying.
Most interesting (and eerie) was their research to act out dying realistically: they watched security camera footage from video games' greatest albatross around its neck, the Columbine High School shootings. The NYT writes, "When a person is shot at close range... his body simply collapses: 'What's really chilling about it is how it's visually not interesting.'"
