Kartasi Origins
level 1 of the Kartasi saga
University of Alaska Fairbanks
written devised directed
Kartasi: The Traveler (level 2)
Playwright and director Thomas Riccio calls his new theatre piece, "Kartasi," a "cyber ritual." That's about right. Although the Theatre UAF production displays traditional dramatic devices such as dialogue, conflict and a hero, all these elements are reduced to their essentials and placed in the conceptual framework of a video game.
The play manages to raise intriguing questions and keep the audience's attention. Riccio does this in part, by making Kartasi interactive. The audience votes at various points on the hero's success or decides where the story will lead. This interactivity points to the video game conceit.
But Riccio has ambitiously stuffed the production with a host of other technical devices towards the same end. He has projected on a screen, placed upstage center, computer elements such as character profiles, digital landscapes and electronic patterns. And he's combined these "cyber" elements with lurid lighting, synthesized music and sound effects, creating a complex production.
Riccio manages to touch on some profound truths in his work, not least that we are all like characters locked in a software program we did not create. Like Kartasi, with strength, luck and help to overcome this genetic and social programming we can take command of the game in which we find ourselves.
Robert Hannon, The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Researching his latest play, Thomas Riccio had to buy a Play Station 2 and play video games for up to 12 to 13 hours a day. He immersed himself in a world of heroes, villains, warrior clans, charms and supernatural powers for five to six months.
Riccio said computer games are full of archetypes, such as heroes and villains. The games invite player to participate at several levels, much like watching a play and entering an actor's world.
"When you are playing games, you vicariously the hero," he said.
Riccio, who has worked extensively in the area of ritual and indigenous performance, views video and computer games as contemporary manifestations of ancient ritual.
Debbie Carter, The Fairbanks News-Miner
