GAMING and comedy collide in a Chose Your Own Adventure-style show at the Fringe.
Intrepid comic Mel McGlensey will let the audience decided what happens next based on their cheering, hollering and maybe even jeering.
For Mel McGlensey is NORMAL, she’s teamed up with hubby Douglas Wilson, a game designer and academic who has worked on award-winning video games Sportsfriends and Mutazione.
• Mel McGlensey is NORMAL is like a funny Choose Your Own Adventure.
“The idea for the show came from some silly little bits I do at home to make my partner Douglas, laugh,” McGlensey says.
“Whenever one of these bits gets too strange or outlandish, Doug would tell me it was ‘time to be normal’ and I would then have fun playing with that and pretending to be as normal as possible (spoiler alert: I never succeeded at being very normal).”
Using the game engine Unity, Wilson developed a custom app that makes choices based on the loudness of the applause.
The software loads visual and audio cues during the show, and displays overall trends about audience choices.
“The show has a built-in memory that enables us to do really complex call backs and also offer them some fun meta choices throughout,” McGlensey says.
“It’s really a perfect combination because the show can be so loose and wild in the clowny bits, but the polish of the tech really helps bring it all together and keep it on the rails.
“The learning curves were more in the writing/developing stage because sometimes my director and I wanted to pivot or change things really abruptly and Doug has to occasionally put his foot down and inform us that these kinds of changes potentially meant hours and hours of extra coding for him”
Fusing video game narrative with clown and live performance, the show begs the question—What is normal?
“The final product is something really exciting and I think, unique. And very, very ‘normal’”. McGlensey says.
Folk might remember McGlensey from her award-winning show at last year’s Fringe World, Mel McGlensey is MOTORBOAT.
Mel McGlensey is NORMAL is at The Pleasure Garden (The Parlour) January 21-February 1 as part of Perth Fringe World. Tix at fringeworld.com.au.