NEW YORK CITY: Mix a classic play and a popular online video game, and what do you get? From the Lincoln Center Collider Fellowship, a form of digital performance that both disrupts and invites: Theatre Royale.
Conceived by 2024-25 fellow Brandon Powers, Theatre Royale is both a theatre company and an interactive livestream. Two actors read a play—currently in rep are Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, Antigone by Sophocles, and Love Letters by A. R. Gurney—while also playing the video game Fortnite. Two audience members can serve as the actors’ “guardians,” defending them from other characters within the game world, while unlimited audience members can watch the livestream and interact in the chat.
Inspired by conversations about the death of American theatre, his background in choreography and immersive performance, and his experience in internet cultures, Powers initiated the project as a way to build the future of performance as well as a community around play (and plays). “I see Fortnite as the modern-day agora of ancient Greece,” he said. “It’s a community gathering space, not just a game.”
It’s quite a massive space. According to ActivePlayer.io, Fortnite’s average daily player count in January was 2.25 million players, with a peak of 3.76 million players. Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, describes it as “a world of many games and other experiences,” with Fortnite Battle Royale taking place on an island where each player’s goal is to be the last one standing. In their struggle for survival in this game mode, players can search for loot, construct forts, and shoot at enemies. Where might a performance fit into this? You might hear Antigone weeping for her brother while shots are going off, listen to multiple players excitedly react to the action and dramatic visual effects, or blow up the chat with emotes to influence the actors’ performances.
“The dissonance there, to me, is really exciting,” observed Powers. “You’re hearing crossfire when Antigone is saying, ‘Look at him at the gates,’ or ‘I need to bury him’—and then to get shot at, combined with this idea of death of the American theatre—this is what it feels like to be an artist right now. You’re trying to create moving art in a moment when the world is seemingly falling apart and trying to find meaning in doing a play. We’re in the middle of Battle Royale trying to do our job.”
The chaos provokes a different perspective not only on the role of traditional American theatre, but on how a built-in community space, especially one filled with younger generations, can interact and play with art. In 2024, the Pew Research Center reported that 85 percent of teens in the United States play video games, with 72 percent of teens gaming so that they can spend time with each other. And Powers isn’t the only artist to explore this hybrid: The 2024 documentary Grand Theft Hamlet follows the attempt of two actors to stage the Shakespeare tragedy entirely within the Grand Theft Auto.
As Powers continues to develop Theatre Royale as an artistic company and as a community, he also has a long-term vision for these events to move into public spaces, where audience members could switch in and out as teammates. He hopes, above all, that audiences “are engaged and inspired in what theatre can be. It’s more than just sitting in a theatre and watching something happen in front of you, but rather how we can solve problems together, be challenged, and more deeply associated with the fabric of society.”
Theatre Royale streams on Twitch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Interested audience members and potential players can join the Discord server.
