Review: FIGHT FOR AMERICA!, Stone Nest

On 6 January 2021, while the US Congress gathered in Washington DC to confirm Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States of America, a mob waited outside. Demanding that their leader Donald J Trump be returned to power, they stormed the Capitol building to confront the lawmakers.

Right-wing groups - the OathKeepers, The Proud Boys, QAnon conspiracists - charged the perimeter. The thin blue line of police officers and security guards couldn’t hold back for long the thousands intent on smashing their way in through doors and windows. Once inside, the rioters went from room to room, ransacking offices as they looked for the man who had blocked Trump’s second term. 

He was eventually (inevitably) found. A vote was quickly taken on what to do next. The result was clear and, a short while later, ex-Vice President Michael Richard Pence was hanged by the neck until dead.

At least, that’s what happened last night. Fight For America! from US company the american vicarious recreates the events of that day through what it grandly calls a “participatory installation”. Now, that made sound like code for an arty orgy, but is in fact more akin to table-top battles along the lines of Warhammer 40,000. It may seem nerdy and complicated — mainly because it can be super nerdy and super complicated — but superfans like The Witcher actor Henry Cavill have been raving about it forever (Cavill is currently working on a TV show based on the game).

In 2023, artistic director of the american vicarious Christopher McElroen brought another historic American confrontation to Stone Nest in Debate: Baldwin Vs Buckley. For this latest work, he has co-created this reflection on modern politics with Neal Wilkinson while the game design is down to the legendary British-Italian specialist Alessio Cavatore. 

Fight For America! is described as “intentionally non-partisan” and aims to present both sides of the political agenda. In so doing, the hope is that players can examine just why political divisions are happening in America (and, to a lesser degree, in the UK and Europe). Audience members can choose to be observers or players with care taken throughout the event to make everyone inclusive.

Players are split into two teams. Team Blue attempts to prevent incursions into the building by deploying rows of hand-painted police and security guards while Team Red do all they can to break in by maneuvering their own ragbag of Trump devotees. Everyone is given the identity of a person who was there (I took on the role of Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola who made the first breach into the building). 

There are plenty of rules about who can do what when and how but, thankfully, there are also plenty of helpers around to remind is of how many dice to roll and what the roll outcomes actually mean. Just as I was getting my head around the setup and strategising with my Oathkeeper colleague how to defeat the pesky cops, the screens announce a change in tactics and all my troops are suddenly doused in “teargas” (actually small balls of cotton wool). That reduced their effectiveness until (you guessed it) a successful roll of the die disperses the gas. 

Cards are handed out at regular intervals which give the players different gameplay tactics. Are the police proving too hard to overcome through normal means? Deploy the “Second Amendment” card and your Proud Boys can just take them off the board by shooting them dead; the flipside is that the police are now allowed to take your own forces in a similar fashion so prepare to take casualties. Other cards let me use extra dice in battles or slip inside the building without so much as glancing at a d6 (a six-sided die).

Once enough of the “reds” have made it into the building, the game switches to another tabletop map where both sides try their hardest to find the missing VP. Is he hiding in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office or has he found refuge in a Senator’s closet? The frantic hunt ends when Pence is revealed.

This time around, Team Red found him and his fate was quickly sealed by a quick hand-vote. Sadly (for him at least), this meant an appointment with the noose for the traitorous politician. If the Team Blue found him, presumably he would be allowed to skip happily back to Indiana and continue his life work banning gays and women from doing whatever little they are still legally allowed to do there.

Fight For America! had a brief runout in Brooklyn, New York and now makes its full debut in the converted West End church that is Stone Nest, a storied venue that has seen numerous Prince afterparties and Bob Geldof’s stag do before marrying Paula Yates. The whole experience is amped up through the use of screens around the tables and a lively soundtrack which ranges from the hard rock of Bad Nerves and Rammstein to the more melodic Lou Reed and the Purple Yoda himself.

Though the game dynamics might not be to everyone’s taste, there is something important at heart here in the way two opposing sides are presented. Imagine if Brexit could have been played out by ardent supporters of both sides in some kind of friendly game before the vote was taken? What if people were forced to not only get up close to facts and opinions they found repugnant but asked to defend them? It sounds extreme but - as we’ve seen in America - it is too easy to stay entrenched in one’s views. Over time, unless a broader perspective is taken on occasion, we all sink deeper and deeper into these positions like a super-comfy sofa and end up feeling that there is a “them” and and an “us” and ne’er the twain shall overlap to any meaningful extent.

Some may point to the real human suffering of 6 January 2021 and ask whether it is too soon for McElroen and his team to bring those events back into the zeitgeist. Pence didn’t really die then but there were deaths and injuries on both sides including suicides in the months after. In keeping the status quo, lives were lost. Arguably, Trump’s decision to commute the sentences of those who attacked the Capitol building has done more than this game to regurgitate the feelings from that brutal day into the present.

Given how the sheer number of wars happening in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere, the question maybe should be: is Fight For America! too soon or not soon enough?

Fight For America continues until 6 July at Stone Nest