Project description:

The unemployed donkeys have one demand: the humans must surrender their machines and give all donkeys their jobs back. But revolution is never easy!

asses.masses is a custom-made video game about labour, technophobia and sharing the load of revolution, designed to be played from beginning to end in a live theatre. This is gaming as performance; an immersive, cheeky and highly original work. Brave spectators take turns at the controller to lead the herd through a post-Industrial society, where asses are valued more for their hides than their potential.

Confronting automation driven job loss, nostalgia as a barrier to progress, and the role of technology in adaptation, we are encouraged to find space between the work that defines us and the play that frees us. 

asses.masses is Animal Farm meets Pokémon meets Final Fantasy: as exciting in form as it is in content. No previous gaming (or donkey) experience required.

Since 2023, asses.masses has toured 14 countries and has been performed in 10 languages.

“For anyone looking to walk into a theatre and experience that art can still be a site of genuine, messy, democratic protest, this show is essential. It’s a riot that proves the best way to build a new world is to play.” - ArtsHub Australia

“Could this be the future of theatre? Fingers Crossed.” - Broadway World UK

On donkeys:

Equus asinus—the ass, the donkey—has played a central role in religion, colonialism, warfare, and the economics of almost every major civilization since its domestication over 5000 years ago. It has symbolized everything from power, strength, and stupidity, to wisdom, piousness, and fertility. In recent years, however, the utility of the ass has been made superfluous in post-Industrial societies and the animal is being ‘transitioned’ to produce other forms of value. In light of these transitions, the contemporary status of the ass presents a particularly potent context for understanding the state of labour in our current era, as well as a reminder of the deeply anthropocentric features of philosophies of labour and emancipation.