Latest / The Killscreen Podcast / The Body Is the Controller: Symoné on Circus, Memory, and Live Play
Transcript
- Host (Jamin Warren): What if the most radical thing that you could do with a video game controller was put it in the hands of someone who's never touched one, but in the middle of a live performance? Symoné is an American and British interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of circus, dance, and game technologies. She holds a degree in anthropology from University of London, received a full scholarship with Code Coven studying game development, and holds a Guinness World Record as a circus artist. In 2024, she created Melanin Power-Up, a six-month workshop program for queer, trans, and intersex people of color to explore experimental game-making. In 2025, she established the Live Art and Gaming Network at LADA, where she's currently an artist-in-residence. Her current project, Null Space Motel, is a one-hour live performance where audience members are called from their seats to play a custom video game, and what they do changes the story unfolding on stage. It's part immersive theater, part narrative game, and entirely unlike anything that I've seen covered in this space, specifically with the on-stage dancing. Today we talk about how she came to games through Katamari Damacy at age eight, why she designs for people who think games aren't for them, what it means to put a spotlight on a player in front of 70 strangers, and why the most meaningful thing a game can do might have nothing to do with winning. I’m Jamin Warren, this is Kill Screen, please enjoy. Symoné: Yeah, okay. I grew up all over the world. My father was in the military, so I've got family based in the UK and in the US, mainly St. Louis and around Washington D.C. So, yeah, I grew up in just like different countries and I always felt like that was really special in terms of—I felt like it helped me grow up fast. It taught me things are not permanent. And when I was 18, I knew I wanted to live in England, so I moved to London. And yeah, my journey—I had no attraction to performance or stage work. I was—I knew I definitely had a craving for some kind of artistic practice, but I wasn't really exposed to what was out there. So, I didn't really know where to go. I started studying anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. And honestly, I feel like my career happened accidentally, essentially. I was—alongside studying, I was going to a lot of underground parties both in the US and here. And I was exposed to circus and performance art. And I was just—yeah, when you see something for the first time, like, okay, this exists out there. So, I started self-teaching, and then I had a professional trainer who taught me at this venue called The Roundhouse in London. And pretty much from there, like, I was like learning high-level circus skills from this mentor and was thrown into performance really quickly. I wanted to be around community and people who were doing this. I didn't really want to do stage work, so it was like, okay, we’re doing this. So, yeah, it was—and then when I did my first—I remember that first show and getting off stage and thinking, oh wow, I love this. And I think that introverted part of myself was feeling this new way of expressing and movement felt like a superpower for me. And I just got more addicted. I feel like—so I didn’t go to circus school or dance school. I learned through YouTube, through community spaces, through just figuring stuff out by just exploring movement and skill. So, I yeah, I feel like new skills built from there, new yearning for different ways of expressing. And so I describe myself as interdisciplinary between circus and cabaret performance art. And so I do fire spinning, hula hoop, roller skating, and mix these things together sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Been a really amazing journey. Yeah. Jamin Warren: Very cool. Can you tell me about that relationship between, like, the stage work and, like, circus? I don't know if there's like a hit history there or it's just more of a conceptual history just in terms of them maybe being related forms of performance, but yeah, tell me like maybe some of what you learned or for someone who may not understand the connection between those two individual worlds. Symoné: Sure. So, I can only go by of course like my own experience and what of what I know and from conversations I've had with other performance artists. So, I guess there's a kind of distinguishing language and art forms as well because arts and entertainment, they can combine and they can also separate. I definitely feel like from what I understand in the UK, there's—there's entertainment circus, and then there's performance art. And these can come together, but—for example, a lot of my peers within circus tend to lean more in the entertainment sector and less and occasionally there are theater productions as well. But I would say that there's different ways that these mediums exist. There’s the West End cabaret or theater productions like Cirque du Soleil. That’s very much performance art, entertainment, spectacle, like it's got that real emergent of both performance art and entertainment in terms of circus. And then there's also, yeah, this kind of other part of circus that's more concerts or corporate events. I don't know if this is painting a picture because I feel like there's a little bit of a separation between maybe theater performance art and entertainment. They can come together, but yeah. Jamin Warren: Okay. Yeah, no, that makes sense. That distinction between, like, entertainment and performance as well. You said that there was, like, a moment for you—you're an introverted person—can you tell me about that—the performance that maybe clicked for you? Or what was it—was the piece that you did? Yeah, do you remember that first—that first moment feeling like, oh this is for me? Symoné: Yeah, that—that very first show, I was—so I used to work with a perform—a circus performance troupe, and essentially, and that helped as an introvert someone—I do solo work now, but then there's no way I would have gotten into that if it was that was the direction. So, that first show was the Olympic Torch Relay at King's Cross. Jamin Warren: Okay. Oh wow. Symoné: Yeah, it was a powerful first show to experience and from came from the sort of the mentor that I was working with at the time. We were essentially being trained to perform for the launch of the Olympics here in London in 2012. So, that was—I believe we performed like an eight-minute hula hoop performance. There was about 10 of us, and there were other circus artists as well, but that was at King's Cross station in London. Jamin Warren: Got it. Got it. Was it—was that, like, an official part of the Olympic program? That was, like, you were part of this group that was welcoming people to London? Okay, very, very cool. Symoné: Yeah, it was. Yeah. Oh, I was just going to explain in terms of the feeling of it—like, I think it was again, I think it was about community and just performing with other people, people that I'd built like friendships with, and we were making and doing something together and, yeah, just having the tie afterwards of like, wow, that was really—yeah, there was nothing else like it at the time. I think I'd never experienced that feeling of being on stage, so I was like, wow, okay, this is why people do it. It feels really like a superpower. So. Jamin Warren: Yeah. How big was the—tell me more about the setup. Like, where was the stage in King's Cross and, yeah, what was the crowd like? Symoné: Yeah, the crowd were—it was—there was definitely a buzz and excitement. It was—in King's Cross station, there’s different levels. So, I believe we were on the top level and there was—yeah, I guess it’s—I mean, it’s a large train station, like one of the busiest in London, one of the busiest in the UK I think. And so we were on one of the levels and they had essentially made this whole stage space that was, yeah, large speakers and, yeah, so. Yeah, it was good. Jamin Warren: Cool, cool. Tell me about, like, your—because I want to work towards Null Space. Tell me about maybe your relationship with games. Has this been like a through-line for you personally in terms of something that you were doing in your free time? I see your headset, so I can make some guesses, but yeah, tell me about your relationship with games, maybe growing up. Symoné: For sure. Yes. So, growing up, my father was a gamer, so— Jamin Warren: Ah, interesting. Symoné: Yeah, so we always had a console in the house. And yeah, when my family and I would go out, he'd always go to GameStop. I was like, I'm going with Dad to GameStop, I don't want to shop for clothes. And so it was going into those stores and seeing what was on the shelves and I was mostly at first playing the games that my dad was buying, which were mainly war games, GTA was one of them—that was one I got into and GTA 3—but the war games and Tom Clancy first-person shooters, I think my mind at the time like was associating this is what games are—it's first-person shooters or platformers. And so that was what I was starting to form in the definition. And I was excited by games, but found myself not really playing those games for that long once I bought—once he bought them. And I remember going into GameStop one day and seeing this wacky, colorful game cover on the shelf. And I was like, what is this? This looks great. Again, I was about eight and I asked my dad like, oh can I have this? Yeah, sure. And so that game was Katamari Damacy. Jamin Warren: Oh, okay. Interesting. Symoné: Yeah, and I remember playing that game and thinking, what, this is so weird. Like games can be weird? I was just really—opened my mind. And still, it’s my favorite game. I still listen to the album, and I will replay the game. Jamin Warren: Yeah. It's an interesting game to have your horizons, like, broadened by. Yeah, the color scheme and the—it's just like a very mirthful and extremely strange game as well. Symoné: Yeah. And I guess I remember reading an article as well about how there was surprise at how popular that game got considering how wacky it was, which is beautiful to see. But I would say essentially that stuck in my mind, and then flash into 2019, I hadn't played games much at all, actually, as an adult, but my friend at the time was basically pushing them on me and just sending me games, saying Symoné, you've got to play this game. And I was—as I was getting into games, I'd realized, again, I'd realized how far they had come and how games can be emotional, they can be philosophical, they can—and seeing more games that are trying of subverting that that original thought form of violence or winning or losing or shooting, which I was really attracted to. I studied game development with Code Coven, which is a marginalized game—do you know Code Coven? Yeah. Jamin Warren: I don't. Symoné: Okay, so they support marginalized developers, they’re US and UK based. Again, curiosity, I didn't really want to make games for work. I was a bit adamant because I didn't want to turn my hobby into a job like I had with circus. But I got addicted and I was like, actually, I love problem-solving. I felt again like this superpower of ability to express through a whole new medium. So, I'd say on—on general, it just happened in that sort of timeline. And I would say Null Space—so that piece started in 2023 in collaboration with another artist, Sammy Metcalfe. And they're sound designer, writer. We—and Sammy and I, we were just having conversations. We have a whole Google Doc about 60 pages called Performance and Video Games, where we're just—we're just talking about—it's a very—it's a joint journal where we're just talking about the intersection. Essentially, and that 60-page Google Doc was the catalyst to Null Space Motel and the kind of tools we wanted to use, the themes, what was inspiring us. I was reviewing that doc, actually last week after you had asked me because I needed to remember the seeds of this project. And I'll just finish here to say like one of the sort of genesis ideas was thinking about characters in video games and how they impact us. Sammy and I were talking about the characters that—characters in our relationship to them essentially, the characters that we loved that we wanted to befriend and, yeah, it’s special to be able to move and interact through this digital world and and those characters stay with you, they feel real. And I just felt like I needed to make work about that. And I wanted people to interact. I didn't want audiences to be spectators and watch a dance or circus piece, like I wanted them to be involved in some way. Jamin Warren: Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting with performance and games. Games started in a very performative capacity, like in arcades. Your personal style and the way you expressed yourself, like in front of an arcade machine, your posture, there was like a lot of body language especially for fighting games as well. Those were games where so much was performative. At least that was my experience. Like, I remember there's this game called Killer Instinct which was like—I think it came to the Nintendo 64, but it was an arcade game. And I remember there was this guy at the arcade, and you could do these combos basically that would finish the round, and this guy would do them, would be like a 64-move combo, he would basically like walk away from the machine—it was like a mic drop moment where he's like, okay the match is basically over, like that's how good he was, is that he was that guy at the arcade. So, yeah, there's so much of that language that kind of got lost when games came indoors. And so it's interesting to see to see that legacy being picked up by people whose background is in performance and is thinking about games like through that lens. It's interesting to see that lineage is not really being necessarily pursued by the video game industry, so to speak, but it is being pursued by people who think of live performance, the integration of games with live performance. It's really heartening. When you were designing—when you were designing Null Space, you talked about your body as a multiversal tool that you have a lot of different ways to engage. When you're designing, are you—how are you thinking about it in terms of is it just the player's hands that you're focused on, is it their whole like being? Tell me a bit about your design process in terms of trying to capture like all of someone's being. Symoné: Yes. Null Space Motel essentially is about an hour-long show and there's around maybe 50 to 70 people approximately in a space. It’s meant to feel very cozy. Low-level to the show, bean bags, just like cozy vibes. Again, stemming from as you mentioned watching people play video games, like in a living room space, was the idea. The player has a cozy orange lounge chair that's in the down center near the audience, center enough that they're near the stage and there's a light spotlight placed on the chair so that people can watch them play. There was definitely—and I should also say of course there's the dancers and there's the set and a large screen as well. There was a really interesting balance with how we wanted players to feel playing it and watching it and staying true to—like the sort—it’s a very dreamy piece as well and keeping to the, yeah, I guess it—it felt very much like work where it’s like it’s 2:00 a.m. Like so very like calming, surreal atmosphere that that Null Space has rather than a kind of on-the-spot playing watching someone play. And I'll say what I'm talking about specifically, we had conversations about having a camera on the player and having that live feed on the screen. And that was exciting for a while, it still kind of is, but there was—there’s something about not putting players on the spot too much and watching them in such an intense way that felt right. I didn’t—it was that balance of making people feel comfortable, like okay, come up, we’re calling you to play the game. This is not a piece where you sit down, someone you must come up and play, like you need to work, but also not putting them on the spotlight of, boom, there's a camera and we're watching every micro-movement that you do. So, yeah, there was that an interesting balance of comfort but on-the-spot discomfort that I wanted to play with. But there's definitely this openness as well that I provide for audiences to—someone's in the chair playing the game, but, you know, they can talk to each other. There’s the show and the piece happening and the movement, but there's space to interrupt as well and to speak to your the person next to you. There's been times people will yell out, like, do this! In the middle, which is really nice. And the the piece feels very much like a collage where the dance and the game are happening, the audience are there, and they have this intersection and timeline in narrative. People can interrupt in their way. It's mostly been very polite, but it's been really interesting and quite nice when people come up and help each other because there is—there are—there is guidance and then there's space for people to just figure things out a bit as well. And I'll lastly say that I in terms of design—yeah, so you asked about design and how I want—it might take on for how I wanted people to feel. There was an intention as well for it to feel approachable in terms of not a game where—there are some games that are designed where you pick up the controller and it’s designed for play games. You understand a PlayStation controller, you know where RT is and all of this. But I wanted it to feel quite simpler in terms of control and focus more on narrative and story. And I really wanted to attract people who feel like games are not for them. Yeah. People would be like they—or people who don't play games but they're interested. And I think that stems from the feeling I had when I realized, oh my gosh, like games have changed, they can be really emotional, they can be philosophical. And I wanted to introduce that to people who feel like they've never played a game because they think it's only platformer games etc. which might not be accessible to to everyone or even be fun. Yeah. Jamin Warren: All right, that's it. If you like this conversation, would like to keep continuing to listen to it, you can head on over to our members' podcast. You can sign up for it at KillScreen.com. If it piques your fancy, please check out our website. I'm always publishing new things, follow us on Instagram, like this episode on your favorite podcast app, you know, all the normal stuff. All right, see you soon.