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Alistair Aitcheson

@agaitcheson.bsky.social

620 followers 370 following 620 posts

🎭 Join my shows to dream, laugh, cause chaos and get creative! ✨ Drag clown and award-winning videogame programmer 🎈 Interactive + playful theatre http://alistair.games http://twitch.tv/agAitcheson

alistair.games

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Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · Sep 10

My next UK show is Weston Super Mare on 15 October!

www.ticketsource.co.uk/frontroomwsm...

For all you lovesick sweethearts in the South-West who want live out your romantic fantasies vicariously through a talking dummy of Pierce Brosnan.

Which is, like, everyone 😊

Poster for My Date with Pierce Brosnan - showing a clown in a french maid outfit fawning over a dummy of Pierce Brosnan

Descriptions of My Date with Pierce Brosnan and support act The Incredible Playable Show

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Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

So even though my friend and I are polar opposites in terms of how we're trying to achieve our aims on the stage, maybe we're not that different after all :)

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

So in doing so you have to respect the audience's individuality. In improv you can't bake that emotional journey in advance. You have to respond to what the room responds to. You can't do that without acknowledging their humanity, and *playing* with it.

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

And maybe that's where improv can do something special. Because my friend's show is really really compelling. If you want to play an improv audience like a violin you need to understand that that audience will be different every night.

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

I hate feeling like I'm being funnelled through someone else's story. So many games feel like a puppet show where I just have to follow the set instructions. Or where I'm being judged for not executing someone else's way of doing something. When do I get to be me?

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

I don't like the idea that the player isn't an individual human being with their own desires and intentions.

What would make me think I'm so smart that I can read the player's mind in advance? Is it really so desirable to see ourselves flattening all players into identical automatons?

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

And it makes me think about a lot of conversation about games that I don't like.

I don't like it when people praise how games skilfully guide the player. How designers funnel players into having the correct emotional response. Like clever ninjas working in the shadows. It doesn't sit right with me.

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

But I think my big reflection is how much game-making has been influential on my approach to creative work, even in other media.

The idea that a show is a game to be played by the audience is important and fundamental to me - my ambitions and my process.

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

So yeah... that was a long tangent. I took a reflection on a conversation with a friend and turned it into a lengthy story about myself. Which probably says something about me and why I like to be on a stage 😂

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

So the show delivers that thing I feel is so important: everyone audience member should have one cool thing where they can say "I made that happen"

It doesn't matter whether they get exactly what they asked for. It matters that it's cool and happened because they - as an individual - joined in.

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

It's more obvious what she's about, but she also offers a kind of friction that inspires curiosity.

She's unpredictable, but you can always see how whatever nonsensical thing was a result of what you asked her to do. A much spicier range of possibilities than "will he eat paint yes/no?"

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

Cafetière has something she wants (the love of Pierce Brosnan). She has a personality and stands up for herself! She'll give the audience exactly what they asked for but not what they wanted!

She's just a much more fun toy for the audience to play with.

And "Love" is a juicier theme than "Art".

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

So My Date with Pierce Brosnan was very much an extension of that idea.

The flighty creativity-enabling goals are less obvious, but I think it's a stronger experience because Mademoiselle Cafetière is a much better toy than "Alistair in a beret"

youtu.be/mUPSyNDc-Mw?...

My Date with Pierce Brosnan - TRAILER

YouTube video by Alistair Aitcheson

youtu.be

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

... but it evolved into "this man is up for anything - what's the weirdest thing you can get him to do?"

Which I absolutely *loved*. It was pure clown. The challenges were built like clown exercises and I drew on everything I'd learnt from years of clown courses.

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

It kind of began with Artholomew Video - my art livestreams that became a stage show. youtu.be/uYulXB9DDQU?...

It was initially about giving viewers - who often didn't see themselves as creative - a space to show themselves how creative they really were...

Crowd Creativity Show! Trailer

YouTube video by Alistair Aitcheson

youtu.be

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

I think the thing that's changed is how I've started embedding myself as part of the mechanics of play.

In The Incredible Playable Show my role was to be compere, the hype man who encourages the audience to let loose.

In My Date with Pierce Brosnan I *am* the toy. I am part of the mechanics.

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

So yeah, even though most of my work now is for the stage, I still see myself as a video-game-maker first and foremost.

Because I'm still trying to reach that goal of creating play that empowers players and gives them a space for self-expression.

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

It's possibly why when I go to workshops I'm much more inspired by the mechanics of the exercises than the material that comes out of them.

It's like "wait, these are meant to GENERATE material? But they ALREADY ARE material!!" 😄

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

So to me, taking to the stage has always been a question of "how can I use this space to enable great play?"

And "what are the exciting personal experiences that people can get out of being invited into this space?"

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

I liked the way games and play could encourage people to express sides of themselves that they didn't have permission to otherwise.

Bringing in physical movement is a fast-lane to getting them to be expressive. So taking to the stage was a way to up the ante and get people moving even more 😄

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

Even when I was making more traditional iPad games I wanted the experience to be about what's going on around the screen rather than inside the screen. youtu.be/UkLYXtewCDo?...

This is the game I released in 2013 and it's all about "the real game goes on outside the screen"

Slamjet Stadium iPad Trailer HD

YouTube video by Alistair Aitcheson

youtu.be

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

I started learning clown to get better at hosting The Incredible Playable Show youtu.be/JBeBiMEk59o?...

And The Incredible Playable Show was trying to make good on something I'd been trying to do for years with my games

The Incredible Playable Show

YouTube video by Alistair Aitcheson

youtu.be

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

We got on to talking about how we got into theatre and I was very aware of how odd my route here has been.

I got into improv through clown and it got into clown through video games. Which... yeah, that's kinda odd 😄

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

Ultimately we're both looking to get the audience to see possibilities in the world they'd not have seen otherwise, by flipping it upside-down.

For him it's the dark emotions at the edge of surrealness. For me it's the rainbow of creative opportunities when you say "why not?"

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 37m

Had a really interesting conversation with an improv friend today. He sees himself as trying to play the audience like an instrument.

Meanwhile I try to offer myself up as an instrument for the audience to play. But what was obvious is that we're both trying to achieve a very similar thing.

Alistair Aitcheson @agaitcheson.bsky.social · 5h

I don't think they'd resonate with me in the same way if I hadn't experienced being part of bringing them to life. We did Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheharezade, which is all about adventure, and you really feel the epic highs and challenging lows when you've struggled through them as a second violin 😄

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