Facilitator: Adrienne Mueller
Shakespeare: Ryan Fox Squire
Friends: Mira Zane, Adrienne Mueller, Sean Nittner, Becca Krock
System: My Daughter, Queen of France, by Daniel Wood
My Daughter, the Queen of France is a game about what it means to grow apart from the things you have made, and the efforts and contortions we go through to reconcile ourselves to that inevitable division.
Ryan, in celebration of his birthday played Shakespeare, set in the modern day. He was estranged from his daughter Portia, who he believed was wise beyond her years. Portia helped her mother Catherine with assisted suicide without telling him about it till she was gone. She moved to Australia and had not talked to Shakespeare for a year.
His friends were:
- Lizze, a former actor in Shakespeare’s plays. A mother figure to Portia (Mira).
- Robert, a lifelong friend of Shakespeare, deeply invested in Portia’s wellbeing (Adrienne)
- Edward, Portia’s older brother, who idolized his father, but had a messy life (Sean)
- Talia, Shakespeare’s costume designer, she saw the wild side of Portia (Becca)
Scenes
We played the following scenes:
- The Estrangement, played first, and last.
- Shakespeare and Catherine’s honeymoon in France.
- Portia’s college tour of Sarah Lawrence, Talia’s alma mater.
- Portia asking Edward for help with Catherine’s care.
- Shakespeare calling his friends together to plan a surprise trip to Australia, where Catherine dreamed of going when they were young,
We played these scenes over. Based on the rules of the game, each time we played them a limitation was lifted, and a certainty was added. The limitations:
- No first-person dialogue.
- No description of physical action or stage
- directions.
- No description or enactment of emotional states.
- No soliloquys
The certainties were lines, emotions, and actions that Shakespeare captured from our performances that he locked in. That was how it happened!
Thoughts on this game
Ryan’s choice to make the reason for estrangement so serious seemed daunting at first, but it filled our scenes with so much meaning. After the game he said he wanted to pick something that wasn’t clean cut, with one person clearly in the wrong. And he did it. Our scenes showed the struggles of everyone involved. Late in the game when we delivered our soliloquys, there was power and meaning behind our words.
It was amazing to replay the same scenes over and over and to learn what each of us thought of each other, and of Shakespeare.
As Edward, the devoted son with a drinking problem, I played Shakespeare as honorable and loving, Portia as alternatively wild, dramatic, and selfish. As I saw others portray me as a drunk, I first grew petulant, then sorrowful at what I had done with my life, and empathetic with how much Portia had done to protect us all, including our father.
An incredible game with so much gravitas, but also incredible humor and levity. Would play again in a heartbeat.
This game was possibly my favorite game of FoxCon. It blew me away. I’ve never done anything like it. Thanks so much to everyone for the incredible participation, and for being willing to go with me into such serious subject matter. Thanks so much to Adrienne for suggesting it and teaching us how to play.
Playing as Shakespeare was totally rewarding and fun despite the serious subject matter. I set up a premise that left it totally ambiguous why Portia did what she did and in what ways Shakespeare could be at fault. I had a strong idea in my head what the shape of the conflict was, but was humbled and delighted by the story you all told. It was amazing to see all of you fill in the details.
I would be eager to play this again as a player (being Shakespeare was also extreme fun and I would totally do that again too). I can also imagine doing this game in a way with a much much lighter tone, a more silky or frivolous estrangement, and more opportunity for comedy and deprecating humor.
The play within the play nature of this game creates such interesting roleplaying opportunities. I particularly appreciated Sean’s big choices as Edward, and Edwards own growth arc that happened across the session. Sean’s soliloquy as Portia at the end was touching and a sharp contrast to his first portrayal of Portia as the shirtless girl.gone wild on a college tour. And his portrayals of Shakespeare were by far the most charitable. Similarly, Lizzie’s (Portia nanny) portrayals of Portia were so kind and showed her as a fragile daughter doing the best she could. In particular, Mira’s performance of Portia at the estrangement scene was very moving.
I really really like this game. The structure of replaying scenes multiple times from different perspectives is so rich. It plays with the fallibility of all of our memory, and the deeply subjective nature of relationships and human interactions. What really did happen? And does it matter who said what or just how it felt?
I really enjoyed trying to come up with scenes to fill in relationships and flesh out characters as well as create puzzle pieces to try to make Shakespeare more sympathetic. If I played this again I would lean into focusing more on characters even more, for example Roberts character got somewhat neglected. But there wasn’t enough time! It was hard to decide when to replay a scene vs when to add a new scene. I was inclined to replay scenes a lot bc that is the unique aspect of this game design, and I don’t regret it. We played for 4.5 hours and it felt very full in a good way.
One of the most powerful and surprising moments for me was when I set up the scene in which Shakespeare, Talia and Robert meet at the theater and Shakespeare asks for their help to plan the Australia trip. This scene did not go AT ALL how I expected. The idea I had was that his friends would be excited to help him, but Catherine died unexpectedly early before the surprise trip happened and Catherine never knew about it. Instead his friends were sober and frank, and the idea was received as naive, out of touch, and selfish. “have you asked Catherine what she actually wants?” ..”you need to talk to Catherine”. This was a key moment for me when I realized that I had been rooting for Shakespeare more than I thought, and I was going to have to swallow some seriously bitter truths.
In our game it was interesting how all the players sort of converged on a similar POV on what happened, or at least on Shakespeare’s main flaws/faults. From where I stood, it seemed like: Shakespeare was too absent in life and at the end, and Portia was overburden by the intensity of everything and feeling alone. The room was sympathetic to Portia and created highly believable explanations for why Portia did what she did. Fascinating. . I could imagine a different outcome where players are more split, and some players side with Shakespeare more and other side with Portia more. For example, if Portia had been very clearly in the wrong, the game might be more about convincing Shakespeare to swallow his pride and be willing accept her apology or something. If I play shakespeare again someday I would love to try to set it up that way to see what happens. There is maybe a natural gravity towards promoting reconciliation, which is good, but I wonder what it would look like if one or more players had more negative views of the daughter and the daughter’s actions. Or could you have a version where the players are ever NOT promoting reconciliation. What would that look like?
Becca performing as six year old Portia was great and introducing the first threads of Shakespeare’s infidelity from the POV of a child was brilliant and also (as child of divorced parents) heartbreaking.
Adrienne had many great moments, especially when playing Catherine. Adrienne had some great moments maybe on both sides during the honeymoon scene. I also thought that Robert playing Shakespeare giving the soliloquy and closing the game was particularly poignant. Everyone’s soliloquys were beautiful.
I was blown away by everyone’s performances and the sad, beautiful story we invented together out of thin air. This to me is the full realization of the power of storytelling games. Thank you all so much. I will think about this game for a very long time.