Neal Wilkinson, acclaimed designer and co-creator of Fight for America!, brings a bold new theatrical experience to London’s Stone Nest. This world premiere production fuses immersive theatre with tabletop wargaming to explore the legacy of the Capitol riot and the fragility of democracy.
Fight for America! invites audiences to step into a high-stakes, turn-based strategy game where political ideologies clash on a massive game board. With over 10,000 hand-painted miniatures and a 14-foot Capitol model, the show is as visually stunning as it is thought-provoking.
Fight for America! runs until Sunday 6 July at Stone Nest, London. Tickets are available now at stonenest.org/events/fight-for-america.
You’re bringing Fight for America! to Stone Nest – what can you tell us about the show?
Fight For America! is a piece of participatory art with a tabletop wargame at its centre. We invite 20 players (and as many observers can fit in the room) to revisit the events of January 6th and the riot at the US Capitol. The experience explores the gamification of politics, where all that matters is your ‘team’ winning. It is an opportunity to take a unique look at one of the most consequential moments in recent American history, the history of which is currently being re-written.
This production blends theatre with wargaming in a truly unique way. How did the idea for this hybrid format come about?
I play board games and role-played and was a wargamer when I was younger, and have always valued the social power of gaming. When I pitched the idea of Fight For America! to Christopher McElroen, my creative partner in this, the concept was to confront, critique, and explore what happened on January 6th through a medium that could be participated in, where people could take sides they don’t necessarily agree with, and we could heighten the experience with theatrical aspects, like wargaming meets e-gaming.
As Christopher said to me at some point during the development process, his family couldn’t talk politics face to face, but they could talk about anything and everything while playing a board game. The key to audience engagement is participation, just like democracy.
As the lead designer, you’ve created a 50’ x 50’ game board with over 10,000 miniatures. What was the most challenging or rewarding part of that process?
Challenges besides arts funding under the Trump regime? Well, physically, I’d say the biggest challenge has been the painting of such a volume of miniatures: we’ve had to recruit a small army to paint our small army. The process of 3D printing the US Capitol at 1:64 scale was very rewarding. Since the scale of the figurines dictated the size of the building and gaming tables, we ended up with a rather epic installation that I then had to design to be playable. I think the most rewarding part of all this though, was when a US Capitol Police Officer visited a playtest session, watched us play, told us about his experiences from that day, and left a supporter of what we are trying to do with this project.
The show invites participants to embody opposing factions from the Capitol riot. How do you approach designing something so politically charged while keeping it engaging and reflective?
In developing the game at the centre of this Fight For America!, it was important for us to create a rule set that anyone, no matter their political affiliations or gaming experience, could play, understand and want to win. This is what Alessio Cavatore, who designed the rules, did so brilliantly. We are consciously confronting a taboo against wargaming current events in order to create a visceral experience of those events. Individuals who were at the US Capitol on Jan 6th are assigned to participants, but this is not a role-playing game. There is a strong sense throughout of ‘what would you do if you were there?’
You’ve worked on a wide range of productions and installations. How does Fight for America! compare to your past work in terms of scale and impact?
This is the first time I have been a part of a project that was related to politics. We originally planned to open on January 6th of this year, but the results of the election in November made us realize no one would want to play a game about the Jan 6th days before Trump was inaugurated for the second time. We pivoted to do some play testing in January instead, and that week the participants of the riots were pardoned. The history of Jan 6th was being actively rewritten, as it continues to be week by week. With this project we have a new responsibility to represent the events as they actually happened that day.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Fight for America!?
We start Fight For America! with the question, “What about America is worth fighting for?” I think it is very easy to say that, given the current state of things, there is nothing worth fighting for. And it’s not just America, there’s a lot that is currently wrong with the world. But I would contradict this and say that this is exactly the time that we need to stand up for what we believe in. One of the most interesting responses by someone who participated in Fight For America! was that the insurrectionists were a united community, which is how they got so far, and maybe someday those that believe in a more welcoming and equitable country would somehow unite as a community as well. I’d like to fight for that, wouldn’t you?