In this ‘board game theatre’ project in Hong Kong, the audience are players

Imagine stepping into a theatre where the audience are not told to sit down and the script is written on the fly based on their choices. This is what happens in musician and theatre director Jing Wong’s latest project, When the World is Your Enemy – Epic Edition, a highly interactive show at the West Kowloon Cultural District where the boundary between board game and live drama completely blurs.

Though Wong is mostly known as an indie folk musician, for this project he drew from his current PhD thesis on interactive storytelling and game theatre, which he is completing at City University of Hong Kong, to create this ambitious “board game theatre” idea that had a successful first run in spring at WestK’s The Room.

This grander, “more devious” version will take place at WestK’s The Box this September and October.

“Covid-19 hit and then I was playing board games five days a week – at least six to eight hours a day,” Wong says. He describes board games as a particularly “engaging and interactive” storytelling medium in which every choice that each player makes can house layers of consequences.

When the World is Your Enemy casts its audience members as active players rather than passive spectators: one either takes on the role of a power-hungry “god” or a “human” among warring civilisations as they navigate broad story arcs alongside in-character performers.

Wong is keeping his cards close to his chest to avoid spoiling the show. But he says that the human players must aim to create their own civilisations through trade and alliances. They are the players who, depending on their personal philosophies, create dramatic moments of coalitions and betrayal.