Best Before puts the existential back in Xbox

How open are you about your stance on abortion?

If your neigh­bour smokes pot, should you?

How about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth; if you had a real say in it, would you make it equal?

 

While many of us, as indi­vid­u­als, like to believe we shape our world around us with the choices we make, often­times it does not feel that way. We get lost in the mix and our voices are hushed in the roar­ing crowd. But what if the crowd sud­denly got a lot smaller and the choices you made had an imme­di­ate effect on those sit­ting right beside you? Enter 2010 PuSh Festival’s Best Before, an inter­ac­tive the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence like no other that puts 200 audi­ence mem­bers in con­trol of their own lives, their own world, and the fate of the com­mu­nity they help cre­ate and inhabit.

 

Taking place in the Vancouver East Cultural Center (the Cultch), the ambi­tious cre­ators behind this dig­i­tal micro­cosm use the tra­di­tional the­atre space in a non-traditional way, pro­ject­ing each audi­ence mem­ber onto a large screen in the form of a small egg-shaped avatar, and giv­ing them free­dom to move around with a familiar-looking video game con­troller that comes attached to each seat. As you are ‘born’ into a world the pro­gram­mers call Bestland, you have free reign to move about, which becomes inte­gral to the yes or no vot­ing that takes place in lieu of the mod­er­a­tors’ socially-determining questions.

 

Do you have sex at age 15? Move left for yes, right for no.

Do you keep the baby? Move left for yes, right for no.

 

Simple enough, but as the con­se­quences of these deci­sions en masse begin to send peo­ple to either the hos­pi­tal or jail, the push and pull of our col­lec­tive con­science begins to under­mine our inde­pen­dent moti­va­tions. After all, it’s for the greater good, isn’t it?

 

Slowly we see our world tak­ing shape, built around the famil­iar con­tro­ver­sies of every­day life, and play­ing cathar­ti­cally upon our silent fantasies.

 

There is, how­ever, a flesh and blood ele­ment to the per­for­mance which arguably relates to this dig­i­tal exer­cise. We are greeted at the show’s open­ing by a woman who gives a mono­logue about her own life and the choices she has made. A non-actor, she is joined through­out the per­for­mance by other real-life cit­i­zens who share the stage with the two com­puter pro­gram­mers, and together, the four humans peri­od­i­cally halt the action of Bestland to deliver var­i­ous anec­dotes, tes­ti­mo­ni­als, and humourous quips relat­ing to cer­tain choices they have made through­out their lives. Granted, the attempts to add an addi­tional layer to the rel­a­tive com­plex­ity of a per­for­mance of this nature are appre­ci­ated, espe­cially under the pre­tenses of live the­atre, what the mes­sage is sup­posed to be gets lost amongst the audi­ence mem­bers’ anx­ious return to gameplay.

 

From taxes to God, chil­dren and divorce, few of the deep­est human con­di­tions are left unex­plored. In the end you get the sense that the cre­ators of this exis­ten­tial endeav­our are try­ing to say some­thing, that there is a mes­sage buried some­where within the 1’s and 0’s of Bestland, but apart from the inher­ent social com­men­tary sur­round­ing a polit­i­cal exper­i­ment of this nature, noth­ing pro­found mate­ri­al­izes through this mod­ern mix­ture of medi­ums. That being said, if you’ve ever wanted to go on a killing spree, com­mit sui­cide, or shoot heroin from the com­fort of your own seat than this per­for­mance is for you.