NON-PLAYER CHARACTER Comes to Edinburgh Fringe

A boundary pushing fusion of immersive, improvised theatre and video games where no two performances are the same; this virtual reality musical invites the audience to influence the narrative through on stage and spectator participation. Award-winning actor and creator Brendan Bradley portrays a non-playable character (NPC) of a fictitious videogame who is joined on-stage by four ‘Players’ wearing VR headsets, along with seated spectators and audiences watching from home through a livestream who assist in creating the story via a mobile web app. After the hero dies, participants travel through the five levels of the game’s open-world setting that represent the five stages of processing grief, set to a soundtrack of original songs inspired by hit Broadway numbers, pop music, and the chiptune musical style found in video games, along with improvised music reflecting the evolving narrative from an onstage musician. Non-Player Character aims to make a deeper connection between the audience and performer.

A leader in combining live theatre with virtual reality and gaming, this show is the latest in Bradley’s experimentation with new storytelling tools to reach new audiences. Since 2010, he has been writing, producing and performing a range of online series and from 2017 has been looking at more ways to merge technology into live performance. The tools of what would become Non Player Character began in 2020 during Covid lockdown and in 2021, a 3-song cycle was developed and performed live to audiences winning Best in VR Interactive Immersive Experience, The Queensland XR Festival and a Finalist for Best Location Based Experience, The VR Awards. For this version of the show, Bradley is offering other artists taking part in Edinburgh Festival Fringe the opportunity to be the four ‘Players’ taking part in the musical each night,similar to a Twitch “let’s play” but live, on-stage.

The project is a collaboration with YOTEL Edinburgh which offers a first of its kind artist residency for the Non-Player Character team to live and perform on-site for the full run of the August festival. The initiative could be an early model for hosting the future of entertainment and hospitality across  YOTEL’s worldwide locations adjacent to prominent festivals and events.

Creator and performer Brendan Bradley said, “As a storyteller, I have always been interested in exploring the boundaries of both my artistic and technical ability. After remote performance had their huge moment during the pandemic, I wanted to see how virtual technology could be integrated back on the physical stage. I believe that virtual reality is just another tool for a performing artist and should be treated as an extension of the performance, the scenery, and the audience in the same way as puppetry or stage machinery. In Non-Player Character, the audience uses gaming mechanics to connect with the live performance as playable theatre; The technology invites them to co-create the experience with the actor - in this case *me* - through a digital lens where they can viscerally experience an entire universe that would never fit on a traditional stage. I want to introduce people to the endless possibilities this technology has for the medium and help theater and gaming communities each expand their definition of the world ‘play’.”

Brendan Bradley is a multi award-winning American actor, director, producer, writer and VR performer who has become a leader in live theatre in virtual reality.He attended New York University, The Lee Strasberg Institute and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London (RADA) before developing his own original, theater, web and film projects. Across his 20 year career, he has garnered over 100 film and television credits and 50M+ views for his online work. He founded The Brendan Bradley Innovation Lab at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts to introduce emerging technologies into live performance training and OnBoardXR to support creators experimenting with virtual reality in live performance. His first VR play Jettison was a Finalist for The Producer Guild of America’s Innovation Award in 2020. He has since performed and produced dozens of live VR experiences including starring in Ferryman Collective’s Welcome To Respite and Gumball Dreams, taking home top awards at SXSW, Raindance and Kaohsiung film festivals and a  live Half-time Show in virtual reality at The Polys XR Awards reported as ‘the first live halftime show in the metaverse’. His traditional videogame work includes motion capture and voice performance in franchises including Resident Evil and MARVEL’s Midnight Suns. 

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