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Did you ever wished you could have participated in the infamous events of January 6, 2021, when a mob attacked the US Capitol building in Washington DC only to be narrowly thwarted by law enforcement? Of course you don’t: it would have been horrible.
But an unusual and eye-catching immersive theatre show called Fight for America! seeks to recreate the most infamous day in recent American history as a gigantic tabletop board game with over 10,000 hand-painted miniatures.
Staged in the Stone Nest arts centre on Shaftesbury Avenue, the show is the brainchild of multimedia performance company the American Vicarious with design by Games Workshop legend Alessio Cavatore.
There are two teams: red – representing the attackers – and blue – representing the defenders. Up to 20 audience members can pay the higher ticket price to actually participate in the game, guided by a games master into making decisions that will shape the outcome of the assault as thousands of miniatures are moved around a gigantic 14-foot model of the building itself. The remaining audience members pay a much lower ticket price to spectate.
Clearly this is a somewhat provocative idea for a show, although it sounds entirely fascinating. It appears the point is not to let you LARP January 6, and the show materials don’t get into the ideology of Team Red – which we’re all pretty familiar with at this stage – in any significant way.
But January 6 happened and by most informed accounts it was a pretty near thing that nothing worse happened. We’re told the point of Fight for America! is to ‘explore the fragility of democracy and the very real consequences of political extremism. It’s part history, part spectacle, and part civic reckoning’.
There are also complimentary snacks, which there probably weren’t on the day itself.
Fight for America! is at Stone Nest, now until Jul 6.