As a sometime theater designer, I am fascinated by how seemingly effortless the heroic effort of putting on a play appears to the audience - and how terrifyingly stressful it feels backstage. Playspace is an interactive representation of a scene from a production of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard viewed from the audience, the wings, the lighting booth and from onstage. Players move through the levels of the game by "walking" to different locations in the theater - the house, backstage, the lighting booth, and finally on to the stage itself. Each location and role presents a different kind of challenge and offers information about the play in different ways - from a gossipy, whispering audience member in the seat next to the player, to a panicking props coordinator backstage who has lost a crucial prop, to the lighting technician who controls the levels of lights on stage, to the actors, who have to remember (or in my game, invent) their lines when they are cued to speak.

Playspace was my first stab at interactive educational design as an undergrad; I don't think it came out too badly.