RISK & WIN ARCADE
Aotea Centre Roof (Level 5), 50 Mayoral Drive, Auckland
11/02/2015 - 28/02/2015
Production Details
TRADE IN YOUR CONSOLE FOR A REAL-LIFE GAMING EXPERIENCE
Adventurous audience members will become part of the story in RISK & WIN ARCADE, a theatrical competition with amazing prizes up for grabs from 11-28 February as part of Auckland Fringe.
Running throughout the three weeks of Auckland Fringe, Auckland CBD will become a real-life gaming arena. The experience will begin on the roof of the Aotea Centre, but from there, participants will have to enter to find out. It’s like The Amazing Race, an adventure movie and video game combined, played out on the streets of Auckland CBD.
Audience members will become investigators as they uncover the mystery of why Cara, a marketing executive at Risk & Win Gaming Corp, has gone missing. A sizeable reward has been offered to anyone who can track her down by Arthur D Skillington, CEO of Risk & Win Gaming Corp and Cara’s father-in-law to be. Tokens will be offered for different challenges and there will be clues and encounters along the way which will help competitors achieve their mission. Each night prizes will be awarded to the top 3 competitors who gain the most tokens. Winners will be invited back to compete in a special grand final with a brand new mission.
Developed by Theatre of Love producer James Wenley (The Enigma Box) and visual-theatre star Ben Anderson (Just Above the Clouds), they aim to give audiences an exhilarating theatre experience that is different to normal theatre fare.
“I love interactive theatre where audiences can take a more active stake in the story. The competitive aspect is really unique, but it’s also important that we tell an engaging story, so even if you don’t win a prize you’ll still go away hyped.” says James Wenley.
RISK & WIN ARCADE plays
Dates: Wed 11 – Sat 14 Feb at 7pm; Wed 18 – Sat 22 Feb at 6pm; Wed 25 – Sat 28 Feb at 6pm
Venue: Aotea Centre Roof (Level 3), 50 Mayoral Drive, Auckland
Tickets: $20 Bookings: www.iticket.co.nz // 0800 iTICKET (484-253)
Auckland Fringe 2015 is an open access arts festival where anything can happen. It provides a platform for practitioners and audiences to unite in the creation of form forward experiences which are championed in an ecology of artistic freedom. The 2015 programme will see work happening all over the show, pushing the boundaries of performance Auckland wide from February 11 to March 1. www.aucklandfringe.co.nz
Cast List
Arthur Skillington: Steve Austin
William: Paul Ballard
Cara: Rebecca Smith
Anna: Crystelle L’Aime
Michael: Chris Bryan
Detective Sharon: Lizzie Morris
Charlie: Stuart Shacklock
Director/Producer: James Wenley
Producer/Publicist: Kristina Hard
Written by Ben Anderson and James Wenley
Presented by Theatre of Love and Auckland Live
With support from The Wallace Trust
Theatre , Site-specific/site-sympathetic , Outdoor ,
Wed-Sat only
A fun way to get involved
Review by Sophie Melchior 13th Feb 2015
Cara is missing and you need to help find her. Risk and Win Arcade is not your typical play. Rather than have the audience be passive consumers of the fiction they are invited into the story, not only to be surrounded by the action but to directly influence what happens.
While the evening starts at the Aotea Centre you are quickly walking around the city with your guide for the evening, Bill: an ‘employee’ of Risk and Win Games, whose CEO has asked you to look the disappearance of Cara. The presence of a guide works well to keep the group on track and to help remove any roadblocks if they develop. Not to mention stopping people from getting lost.
Risk and Win Arcade is essentially theatre, game-ified. The audience are asked to solve puzzles and complete tasks in order to gain tokens. Whoever manages to get the highest value over the course of the evening wins. Pretty simple. But you don’t just gain tokens for solving puzzles, you also get them from interacting directly with the actors.
It’s an interesting experience to be in a space you know, interacting with a fictional character in a fictional situation. The actors do a wonderful job of reacting to our barrage of questions and theories naturally and with conviction. The characters they play are all personally invested in Cara’s disappearance and in finding what has happened to her. Occasionally the parts of the actor’s performance that I assume are scripted push me out of the moment. It is almost as though they are too rehearsed to be part of a ‘real’ moment.
I feel the plot of the evening is slightly simplistic. However it is one that is easily accessible for an audience who might not otherwise feel that comfortable inserting themselves into a fictional situation taking place in the everyday world.
Risk and Win Arcade is a fun way to get involved in interactive storytelling that uses game play and competition to encourage the audience to get fully involved. I’d suggest a fully charged cell phone and comfortable shoes when you go along.
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