Red [Redacted] Theatre
Queering Puzzle-Based Tangible Interaction Design
“Red [Redacted] Theatre” is an interactive puzzle-based experience in which players can discover and relate to queer archives, specifically from the Gender and Sexuality Collection at Georgia State University, through tangible interaction and puzzles. With this experience, our aim is to guide participants deeper into queer theories and understandings of history through play: from a more familiar “surface” understanding of history, into a discovery of queer histories, and eventually even further into a more abstracted challenging and breaking of familiar language and constructs. This project was created in collaboration with Rachel Donley and Terra-Mae Gasque.
Publications
- Alexandra Teixeira Riggs, Rachel Donley, Terra Mae Gasque, Noura Howell, and Anne Sullivan. 2024. Red [Redacted] Theatre: Queering Puzzle-Based Tangible Interaction Design. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference, July 2024. ACM, IT University of Copenhagen Denmark, 509–524.
“Red [Redacted] Theatre” builds on Queer HCI and uses queer methods to design puzzles with archival ephemera from the Red Dyke Theatre, a lesbian theatre group founded in 1970s Atlanta.
Tangible ephemera puzzles guide players from a normative understanding of history, into a discovery of queer histories, towards a queering of history by challenging familiar language and constructs.
We contribute reflections on the design of “Red [Redacted] Theatre” that expand Queer HCI in under-explored areas of tangible interaction and archives.
We outline design considerations for queering tangible interaction in puzzle-based experiences of history.
We explored archives from the Red Dyke Theatre, a lesbian theatre company active in Atlanta from 1972-1978. Their materials are located in the Gender and Sexuality Collections at Georgia State University.
We engaged archival ephemera from the Red Dyke Theatre, including T-shirts, flyers, photo slides, and show notes.
From these archival ephemera, we crafted tangible artifact puzzles
We created three ephemera puzzles: a show flyer, a T-shirt, photo slides
Each puzzle has two possible answers:
- A more easily solved “surface answer,” representing a surface understanding of history
- And a more obscured “hidden answer,” suggesting concealed queer subjects or an alternative understanding of familiar history.
Players could validate their answers in a physical crossword puzzle
We queered the form of the crossword by designing for multiple answers, both “surface” and “hidden”
An internal magnet-based system of reed switches would validate players’ answers if they placed the “correct” letters on the crossword surface
For solved answers, players received stickers with more information and context, which could be placed in a “show program” booklet
Booklets served as tangible reflections of participants’ experiences and personal, take-home ephemera
Design Considerations from Red [Redacted] Theatre
Designing and deconstructing layers of queer understanding: Consider starting with familiar constructs (e.g. a crossword or a timeline of photographs), and encouraging participants to use those very constructs to subvert and disrupt ideals of stability, rationality, objectivity, and coherence.
Situatedness in designing tangible artifact puzzles: Consider the process of creating material replicas (e.g. a flyer that can be deconstructed and reconstructed through folding) as an opportunity to interrogate positionalities, assumptions, and interpretive practices, in curating (and queering) experiences of history.
Designing puzzles that solve to complexity: Consider puzzles that solve to complexity, which engages queer methods in design and procedurally entangles participants in multiple, collective ways of knowing and understanding history.