There are some festival performances you leave having admired. Others you leave having genuinely had a bloody good time. GG firmly belongs in the second camp.
A high-energy, wonderfully quirky collision of performance, gaming and audience participation, GG turns the room into something of an arena, with everyone invited to take on the final boss in one gloriously chaotic showdown. Rather than sitting back and watching the action unfold, you become part of it, swept up in the momentum, noise and sheer enthusiasm of the performers.
There is something particularly enjoyable about the way GG refuses to take itself too seriously. It embraces the playful absurdity of gaming while translating that language into a live performance that feels immediate and communal. The result is an evening where the boundaries between performer and audience, game and theatre, spectator and participant start to blur.
And that’s perhaps what makes it such a good festival experience. You don’t need to arrive with a deep knowledge of gaming, or any particular expectations about what contemporary performance should look like. You just need to be willing to get involved.
I have a simple question I like to ask myself at the end of an event: did you have fun? With GG, the answer was an unequivocal yes.
It’s a fab way to spend an evening absorbing creativity that crosses divides, taking something as familiar and culturally specific as gaming and turning it into a shared live experience. It is energetic, eccentric and just the right amount of ridiculous.
Sometimes art asks you to think. Sometimes it asks you to feel. GG mostly asks you to pick up your controller, join the fight and have a great time.
Final boss defeated. Evening well spent.
