"Fair is foul, and foul is fair." Can a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth become a hacker's motto? This question haunted the Cannes Film Festival in May, and now, the Venice International Film Festival, two major launchpads for the first-ever video game produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Lili is a neo-noir rendition of Macbeth set in modern-day Iran, where the main character is Lady Macbeth (referred to as Lili). For this ground-breaking project, the RSC teamed up with Brooklyn-based indie game developer iNK Stories (1979 Revolution: Black Friday), known for its immersive storytelling. Lili debuted in May as part of Cannes’ second-ever Immersive Competition for VR installations and video games, demoed at the RSC's Festival of Ideas in July, and is currently in competition in Venice's Immersive program.
Festival-goers have been able to experience a short preview of Lili — and we were lucky enough to catch the 30-minute 'prologue' at Cannes. But what's involved in such a game?
Lili plays with ethics and surveillance by making you a voyeur
In Lili, one must enter a hacker’s den with a USB stick in hand, don headphones, and follow the poetic instructions of the Hecate collective — Macbeth’s three witches, reimagined here as hackers. Lili stars Holy Spider actor Zar Amir as Lady Macbeth, and in this interpretation, she's an Iranian woman battling authoritarian gendered oppression.
Lili begins as an initiation, where the player is asked to take a vow and accept the hacker persona, giving you agency within a moral grey zone. One assumes control of the game's surveillance technology to the fullest, as you have access to Lili’s personal documents like her marriage certificate, photos, and passport, and can tune into one of the three different CCTV cameras placed in her house as well as her phone and computer screens. The game’s live-action cinematics were developed with RSC production designers, cinematographers, and costume designers, creating a fully-fledged domestic space for Lili on a set. Within that setting, the player can choose which surveillance angle suits each task, while also effectively spying on the main character.
'Lili' begins as an initiation, where the player is asked to take a vow and accept the hacker persona, giving you agency within a moral grey zone.
Speaking to Mashable, iNK Stories co-founder Navid Khonsari shares that the desktop layout and cameras create a framing that is both intimate and cold, to invite engagement. "Some angles allow you to spot that she's hiding a makeup kit in the kitchen, under a tile. Others, like the hacked phone screen, allow you to follow her gaze," he says. "There's an element of using the cinematography to create levels of intimacy, but also to push curiosity, which in itself is conflicting to the audience."
That ambiguity in how the player relates to their own actions sits at the core of Lili’s game dramaturgy. While you can choose where to look, you are still complicit in surveillance. Vassiliki Khonsari, iNK Stories co-founder and co-director of Lili, refers back to Shakespeare's original play to relate it to surveillance authoritarianism and the contemporary zeitgeist. "In it, Macbeth says, "I have eyes in every castle," which prompts us to look at technological surveillance as a tool for oppression, and to ask: How are we, the voyeur, watching her? How are we also complicit in this surveillance?"
Lili has the player making hard choices
Sarah Ellis, Royal Shakespeare Company’s director of digital development and executive producer of Lili, has been working with iNK Stories on this project for seven years. Ellis, who initiated the 2016 RSC motion capture production of The Tempest, told Mashable, “What great theatre does is get you to imagine the different choices that characters make, as well as their fallibility. Similarly, Macbeth is a play that makes you think about how you would behave, the challenges you face, and the choices you make."
Lili translates this double entendre through screens and prompts, providing a meeting ground between theatre and gaming — a union also explored in the groundbreaking film Grand Theft Hamlet. "The unintended consequences of what you do become very similar to the unintended consequences of a character in a play. However, in Lili you are faced with the ways the world [of the game] can respond to that. I think that’s what Lili does brilliantly: situating you in the complexity and the fallibility of choices that you might make in the moment, but with those unintended consequences that come later," Ellis adds.
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In relation to the game’s dramaturgy of suspicion, iNK Stories co-founder Navid Khonsari says that the most important thing is every player’s unique process of discovery. In the case of Lili, the player (i.e. the hacker) can both witness and impose limitations on internet access. At one point, you are prompted by the Hecate witches to shut off Lili's access to a YouTube makeup tutorial, just like the Iranian government can do it at any time. You can then control Lili’s VPN connection and, with that, the flow of information.
"In the original text, the witches control the flow of events in a supernatural way, testing one’s free will," says Vassiliki Khonsari. "In our version of Macbeth, the witches control the actual flow of information as internet hackers, which is the ultimate power in the end."
Lili provides a new look at Lady Macbeth
Working with Professor Emma Smith of the Royal Shakespeare Company helped ground Lili in the actual text and, according to Navid, to "cultivate centuries of research into something that is not only contemporary, but also viable for players." Players' agency in this case correlates with the agency of Lady Macbeth and Lili, the character played by Cannes Best Actress winner Amir. By giving Lili non-linear backstories, the creators can propose parallel narratives that you feel like they could actually have existed for Lady Macbeth, but in the game, you can actually explore them, alongside the effects of technological domination, misinformation, and deep-state surveillance.
Ellis remarks that, however maligned the character of Lady Macbeth was, she never gets a verse about her death in the play. "You just don't hear from her again," she says, "and then what the game does is it makes you participate in those choices with her."
Defined by her actions as villainous, Lady Macbeth is often framed as the catalyst for Macbeth’s downfall, but what emerged through iNK Stories' pre-production research were the limitations put on her gender. Navid Khonasari says the developers "came to see a real powerful character whose ambitions, if she was a man, would have made her one of the greatest kings that the country had ever had." What compelled them to explore this side of Macbeth was, according to Vassiliki, “this iconic, timeless archetype of a female and this opportunity to look at who she is after 400 years. How do we resuscitate this character that is so relevant today, who is still fiercely fighting against female oppression?"
Placing this 400-year-old story as one of emancipation within the context of surveillance and oppression is a gateway into understanding the world today, adds Ellis. "In order to disrupt it effectively with the story of Lady Macbeth, it is really important we place culture in multiple meeting points now."
What's next for the future of Lili?
The creators behind Lili are hoping to keep the momentum going to raise funds for the full version of the game, which is currently in competition as part of Venice Immersive and is still in development. The final release will be accessible across gaming platforms, though the RSC hasn't specified which.
"Our goal with the larger project is to follow Lili outside of her home," adds Navid, "and we'll be using cell phones and GPS tracking to follow her and her phone." Expanding the world of Lili means expanding the world of Shakespeare, which aligns with the RSC’s mission and the work of Ellis, according to whom it "feels right" to play Shakespeare, in the sense of playing a video game.
"I'm sure if he was still around he would be curious and probably even working in this space,” Ellis says. “He was an innovator and he was someone that looked outward in the world to share those stories on the stage he had at the time. Now, video games like Lili can be the stage of our times."
