This Is Fine (2019/2022)

“Never acknowledge the Apocalypse. That would be impolite.”

WINNER, GOLDEN COBRA 2019 for BEST APOCALYPTIC GAME.

From the Judges: “‘Never acknowledge the apocalypse. That would be impolite.’ This Is Fine is the kind of game that so very much inspires us that we invent a new category for it. In this case, a lot of y’all were designing with the end of the world in mind, so we came up with the Best Apocalyptic Game award. This game is the one that best expresses that unique feeling of simultaneously having to bow and scrape in the neoliberal corporate dystopian present and having to live with the knowledge that it’s all so freakin’ pointless because the world is ending. A straightforward, tight design that welcomes new players and lets players play close to home without surrendering them to the crushing terror of it all.”

“[This is Fine] deals with a very specific intersection between the immanence of the end of the world and the equal immanence of needing to go to work in an empty corporate hellscape. It takes us to a corporate networking event while theliteral apocalypse is destroying all relevance and context outside. But you REALLY need that job so…. The act structure captures Humans In Denial wonderfully.”

For the St. Ambroise Montreal FRINGE Festival in June 2022, Soft Chaos recreated This is Fine as a bespoke interactive theatre performance, inviting the audience to become job-seekers at a special networking event run by Poober (Uber for toilets). As the literal apocalypse happens around them, attendees must do their best to impress both each other and the Poober team. Only one person will be crowned “Unpaid Intern” and earn a spot in Chad Poober’s apocalypse-proof bunker.

Below, you can find the FRINGE festival recruitment video!

This larp and theatre piece was designed with Allison Kyran Cole and D. Squinkifer for Soft Chaos Cooperative.

JESS’S PROJECT ROLES