If you have never heard of the phenomenon that is tabletop role-playing games (or TTRPG to insiders), it may come as a shock that this low-fi, fantasy-based leisure activity is not the niche pastime you may imagine it to be.
While there are certainly elements of nerdy appeal to TTRPG (as depicted in sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory, for example), its global following has legions of mainstream fans who gather, usually in-person, for regular gaming sessions where, with the help of a few simple prompts, their imaginations alone lead them to create stories and adventures that could be carried on for weeks, months or even years at a time.
For Perth/Boorloo-based playwright Scott McArdle the allure of TTRPG first caught his attention at the tender age of 14, and he has hardly missed a session of the popular TTRPG game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) since then… and that was 17 years ago.
But aside from the game having a strong presence in McArdle’s personal life for almost two decades, the artist has also found ways to bring some of the magic he feels while gaming to his work as a playwright, performer and theatre-maker.
And, somewhat surprisingly, this melding of TTRPG and contemporary theatre has been a masterstroke that’s allowed McArdle and his creative collaborators to grow a sizeable fan base and help dispel the idea that the mainstay audience of independent theatre is art world insiders and/or fellow theatre artists.
Instead, McArdle and his artistic collaborators – namely theatre-makers and puppeteers Amberly Cull and Nick Pages-Oliver – are proving that in harnessing the magic of gameplay to tell their stories, they can attract non-traditional theatre crowds to their work and break down longstanding barriers to arts access along their way.
So, how exactly are they doing this? As the artists explain, there are a number of factors behind their unique formula that is expanding their audience base at a time when the sector is in great need of audience growth.
Dungeons and Dragons improv a gateway for new audiences
For McArdle, perhaps the strongest quality of TTRPG is in their endless potential for collaborative storytelling.
From a quick look at McArdle’s career to date, it’s clear the artist didn’t waste time in applying this distinctive form of storytelling to his stage work to great effect.
He explains, ‘For the past nine years, I’ve been doing an improv comedy show in Perth/Boorloo called Improv RPG, which adapts games like D&D to the stage, and it has been a massive hit.
‘We’ve performed it at Fringe World for years, where we won the Fringe World Comedy Award, and we still routinely sell out shows,’ he says, adding that he suspects the show’s long-running success centres on one simple truth.
‘In bringing D&D to the stage in this way, I think we have created a community with our audience who see that we’re not making highbrow art, but something accessible to them and their passions,’ McArdle says.
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‘It’s basically the opposite of everything I was taught at drama school,’ he continues. ‘So it attracts people who feel like theatre is something that is not for them.
‘But I strongly believe we should be making theatre for exactly these audiences – and by that I mean the people who will be amazed and entertained by it,’ he says.
Untapped wellsprings of audiences in societal subcultures?
As well as impressing Fringe audiences and live comedy fans, not surprisingly, McArdle’s improv show has attracted droves of Perth’s local TTRPG community, who routinely turn up to join the fun.
However, it’s one thing to bring new audiences to your improv comedy show during a Fringe festival, but quite another to see these audiences return to watch your full-length contemporary theatre work in an independently produced season outside of the festival calendar.
But that’s exactly what McArdle and his creative team are achieving with their latest show, which is once again drawing Perth’s TTRPG gaming community into the theatre.
This new work is a puppet-musical titled Same Time Next Week, and it tells the story of a group of role-play gamers whose weekly ritual of Dungeons and Dragons is a strong bond that holds them together as one of them faces serious illness.
As co-creator Nick Pages-Oliver explains, the team’s melding of puppetry, music theatre and TTRPG themes in their new work may appear a risky choice on the surface, but in fact it’s a deliberate move to ensure the theatre doors stay wide open for their existing gaming audiences, who they are sure will once again turn out in force to see the show.
‘The audience for this work are people that Scott has already tapped into with his show Improv RPG,’ Pages-Oliver says. ‘Because we know these are people who are not afraid to take a risk on watching new theatre. So, I think this is a great audience to tap into in the first instance.’
But looking beyond the local gaming community, Pages-Oliver, Cull and McArdle see the work as having wide appeal to other mainstream audiences who are currently seeking uplifting experiences against a backdrop of rising life pressures and disastrous world events.
‘We actually think now is the perfect time in the cultural landscape to develop a work like this that sparks joy, and inspires hope and wonder in people,’ Pages-Oliver says.
‘But this is also a story that doesn’t shy away from challenging issues and real subjects that affect us,’ he continues. ‘It’s more that we want to use the sense of play and wonder of music theatre and puppetry to tell these stories on serious subjects.’
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The artist adds that as a young freelance theatre-maker and performer he sees great potential in broadening theatre’s reach through the exciting cross-genre style of work that he and his collaborators are currently exploring.
‘I feel somewhat disheartened by the current situation where major theatre companies feel they can’t take big risks, and where their audiences are generally subscribers who have been going to their shows for decades or they are young people trying to get into the industry,’ he says.
‘But we are really passionate about growing new audiences for theatre, and so I think we should absolutely continue to tap into these different subcultures to broaden our reach.’
Same Time Next Week at The Blue Room Theatre runs from 13 to 31 August.
