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Friday, April 19, 2024
Video Games Are a Playwright’s Muse, Not Her Hobby
The New York Times: The writer Bekah Brunstetter is decidedly not a video game aficionado. Her personality type — “psychotically obsessed with productivity,” as she put it — has sealed off all gaming rabbit holes for the past 25 years.
3 comments:
Sarah Pearce
said...
From the first sentence of this article, my mind immediately went to Lysistrata. So when it was mentioned in the article, I felt extremely validated in my theatrical knowledge. The trope of a boyfriend lost to video games And a girlfriend trying to get them back into the real world is possibly the most modern trope I can think of. It is not a problem we would have seen years ago, at least not to this extent. Of course, I’m sure there is something else that would serve as a substitute, though in my limited experience, I am unsure what it was. And I can almost understand why the video games are so capturing. The ability to have control over a world, to be able to escape reality for a bit. It’s another form form of escapism in a modern society where Is very very sought after. Is the same reason why fantasy romance book genre is so very popular right now.
This is definitely really interesting. When I first started video games my original thought wasn't the Oregon trail. However, having read this piece I definitely see how that makes sense as inspiration for a play. I genuinely have a very limited knowledge of plays and musicals, but somehow I know this play! My highschool performed The Oregon Trail by Bekah Brunstetter in my senior year, but I did not participate in the show. However, I did go to see this show. It was an amazing play with really strong emotions and themes. I enjoyed it a lot. I think it might be really cool to work on the show one day. I hope to see other theater pieces inspired by video games, just because it leaves lots of room for fun, and there's so many different things that you can pull from a video game design into the theater world.
The style with which Brunstetter is inspired by people’s relationship with video games seems to be a pretty unique approach to having a playwriting muse, or at least I haven’t ever heard of a playwright using video games as inspiration in this way before. I feel like it’s definitely becoming more popular to do investigation into people’s relationship with technology through artistry, however, what I have gathered about The Game is that it doesn’t really bring up any interesting new points or perspective. This play seems to just be the same stereotypical video game tropes again: there’s a dismissive boyfriend who plays too many games and his girlfriend is annoyed about it. That’s not really interesting to watch a play about, we are exposed to that trope so often already. I thought it was funny how there is one couple which has a girlfriend who is the one playing too many video games, as if having one extra female character and talking about a 45% statistic somehow makes the show more interesting.
3 comments:
From the first sentence of this article, my mind immediately went to Lysistrata. So when it was mentioned in the article, I felt extremely validated in my theatrical knowledge. The trope of a boyfriend lost to video games And a girlfriend trying to get them back into the real world is possibly the most modern trope I can think of. It is not a problem we would have seen years ago, at least not to this extent. Of course, I’m sure there is something else that would serve as a substitute, though in my limited experience, I am unsure what it was. And I can almost understand why the video games are so capturing. The ability to have control over a world, to be able to escape reality for a bit. It’s another form form of escapism in a modern society where Is very very sought after. Is the same reason why fantasy romance book genre is so very popular right now.
This is definitely really interesting. When I first started video games my original thought wasn't the Oregon trail. However, having read this piece I definitely see how that makes sense as inspiration for a play. I genuinely have a very limited knowledge of plays and musicals, but somehow I know this play! My highschool performed The Oregon Trail by Bekah Brunstetter in my senior year, but I did not participate in the show. However, I did go to see this show. It was an amazing play with really strong emotions and themes. I enjoyed it a lot. I think it might be really cool to work on the show one day. I hope to see other theater pieces inspired by video games, just because it leaves lots of room for fun, and there's so many different things that you can pull from a video game design into the theater world.
The style with which Brunstetter is inspired by people’s relationship with video games seems to be a pretty unique approach to having a playwriting muse, or at least I haven’t ever heard of a playwright using video games as inspiration in this way before. I feel like it’s definitely becoming more popular to do investigation into people’s relationship with technology through artistry, however, what I have gathered about The Game is that it doesn’t really bring up any interesting new points or perspective. This play seems to just be the same stereotypical video game tropes again: there’s a dismissive boyfriend who plays too many games and his girlfriend is annoyed about it. That’s not really interesting to watch a play about, we are exposed to that trope so often already. I thought it was funny how there is one couple which has a girlfriend who is the one playing too many video games, as if having one extra female character and talking about a 45% statistic somehow makes the show more interesting.
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