Voidspace:
Hakan, welcome. Thank you so much for having a chat with me about many things, including your contribution to the Voidspace Live 2025, which was, If You Think I Should Make Better Life Choices, Turn To Page 42.
42? Of course, 42. If you’re going to pick a number, it’s got to be that one.
Hakan Akgül:
It’s got to be that one, exactly.
Voidspace:
First off, I know you have done many, many things. Was this your first piece of specifically interactive theatre?
Hakan Akgül:
Yes.
Voidspace:
Let’s talk about just what brought you to this juncture, because you’ve been involved in a lot of different adjacent things.
Hakan Akgül:
I’ve been a theatre maker and storyteller for 10 or 12 years now. I started as just a theatre maker, trying to act, trying to learn about the craft.
We were a troupe of very little means. We would wear many hats. So I had the chance to learn light design, sound design, directing, mise en scène, dramaturgy. Everybody would do everything at all times. I come from a theatre making background where it’s literally just theatre making, not just acting or doing this or doing that. We’re just creating an art piece together.
I started writing for theatre a couple of years into that trying to create shows for a regular seated audience.
Sometimes we have experimented with blurring the lines. But that was just a taste, just to keep them on their toes. They would not really have an impact on what’s going on on the stage, or the story itself. We had this one show where towards the climax, this one kid is trying to hide from soldiers, and she would jump in between the rows of audience members, and she would ask for people to hide her. The soldiers wouldn’t find her no matter what. But it just gave the sense of involvement for the audience.
Then we started exploring that more, and then I started doing D&D a lot, and any other TTRPGs I could, with my theatre friends. That created a new method of storytelling, where I wouldn’t be the writer who just told you what happens. I would come up with a story or a frame, and I would bring it to people, and they would help me write it, or we would create a new thing together.
Voidspace:
So did that come from actually wanting to expand your practice, or was it just for fun?
Hakan Akgül:
Well, I think what it started off as is that theatre is a difficult field to be in, especially to make money, and a living out of it. So we had come to that point in our lives when we were like, 25, 26? And we went, are we going to keep this up or are we going to get office jobs? We were trying to slowly transition to this territory.
I think TTRPGs created a new venture for us, where we could have the same fun of just expressing and creating a story and improvising and the drama of it all, without all the hassle of having to put it on and sell tickets, finding a venue, setting up an Instagram account etc.
It helped us because we just love the art itself. So we thought, we can just do it amongst ourselves and have so much fun. And obviously, because we can’t get enough of anything, soon after thought, we’re doing this really good thing. We should stream it. Then of course we realised we had to set up an Instagram account, market this, stream it and record it…
Voidspace:
You can’t just let yourself just have fun, can you?
Hakan Akgül:
Exactly. So we’re at that point in our careers, again, with the TTRPG world.
But I think after my MA in writing in London, after moving to London, and putting on a play and everything, I was also burnt out. Because doing an MA is so exhausting, with how much writing there is. It’s great that they do that with you, because they prepare you for the industry. But I just felt like I couldn’t write anything.
But the TTRPG side of my brain was still working. I was writing 30 page descriptions of intrigue, of this political landscape of the city that the characters are going to be in, etc. Writing this comes so easily, but writing for theatre doesn’t. So I wanted to merge the two.
Voidspace:
I wonder why one feels so much easier than the other.
Hakan Akgül:
There’s something to be said about tricking your brain into doing actual work saying to yourself it’s just for fun.
But also, with a TTRPG setting, I am not trying to make it perfect. I’m just trying to create the plot, and the land, and the structure, because I know the beauty of it is that it’s going to be perfect in the moment. I’m not trying to pick the perfect word to say in that moment. But when I’m writing a play, I write a sentence and I go, oh, maybe I should have stopped long ago. Maybe somebody should have broken the pen in my head at age 10, and never let me near a page ever again.
If You Think I Should Make Better Life Choices, allowed me to write some parts, and by writing around people’s choices, I could go with people’s choices as well. I could make the audience write it, so that I can just go with the moment and don’t have to think.
There’s a moment in the show where I ask the audience for help to write a love letter. If I were to sit down and write that love letter myself, to put in a show, I don’t know how long it would have taken me. So many sleepless nights, so many existential crises. But by asking the audience, I structured it in a way that is engaging. It’s fun with the audience to write it together. And no matter how much silly stuff they say, it always comes out beautiful, because it’s supposed to be a love letter, and it works itself out somehow.
Voidspace:
I love that. You’re giving up control a little bit. But by doing that, actually, you’re letting something grow.
Hakan Akgül:
Exactly. I think that is the beauty of this work, the more control you give up, the more you can do that. I didn’t want to write a play that just uses the touches of the immersive experience without actually giving the audience any choice or any agency to change anything.
Voidspace:
Can you give me an overview of what the show is, who you are in it, what the audience are doing.
What is the story of the show?
Hakan Akgül:
The show is about a man who we find at the tail end of a bender, a crazy night he had. He’s leaving a house after a hookup, in the middle of the night.
It starts off like a monologue play, to let people start easy on the choices: they just choose what moniker I should go by, or what important items they have had gifted to them in their lives, et cetera. And he quickly realises he has lost his watch at one point during the night, and that puts him in a downward spiral. He realises he must have lost it tonight in one of the main locations he’s been to. He enlists the audience’s help to retrace his steps and find out where the watch is.
Mostly what the audience does is choosing where to go, and what to do there. And every place we go, there are mini games. What happened at Voidspace Live in June 2025 was that they chose to go to Paradise Club, which is definitely not Heaven – to try to see if we could find the watch there.
It was a game that everybody has played in kindergarten, where you try to figure out who’s starting the dance moves in a group of people dancing. Somebody’s the leader and everybody’s following them. It was that game, a couple of times, and trying to find the guy he had spoken to that night to see if he was asked to ask if he was wearing a watch.
Voidspace:
Nice.
Hakan Akgül:
There were lots of things like that, and they all end with small monologues by those characters, given to the audience members to act out.
And descriptions of the city and the landscape and the night time experience, of just not being able to figure out what to do with yourself, are also given to audience members, to set them up in the scene as storytellers, like a mum telling a story to a child at night to put them to sleep. Those bits are given to audience members, to put their own flavours into it, and then decide what to do.
It all leads into one of the two main locations. One includes writing a love letter together, and one includes creating a song together. We went with the love letter one.
Voidspace:
There are options that didn’t get explored?
Hakan Akgül:
Yeah. Every choice they make is calculated. And if they always give me really good advice it leads me into a different ending. If they always give me bad advice or if they always give me crazy stuff to do, like kiss that guy, slap this person, run away, and things like that, it leads to different ways of dealing with troubling situations.
I just keep track of those, what problem solving methods they use, and that leads to different endings.
Voidspace:
I love the idea of using these different, quite active mini games to give different flavours to the night, bringing in that playful and slightly more improvisatory stuff. The dancing game is almost working with participation on quite a few different levels at once.
From a mechanical perspective, I am really interested in how on earth you keep track of the audience’s choices, given that you’re also the solo performer. You’re just keeping track of it in your head?
Hakan Akgül:
Yes. I tried using some visual elements of what I was keeping track of so the audience can see the impact of their choices. That’s something I’d make stronger next time.
Voidspace:
You want to communicate that to the audience so that the impact of their choices is felt more strongly, and their sense of agency is more powerful.
Hakan Akgül:
Exactly. They feel like it matters, and can see that there are multiple endings.
There’s one ending that is just a Q&A, where I just fully cut off everything. I’m like, “Hi! So, we’re going to stop the play right here. The whole game is done. This is me, Hakan. Hello. Let’s just have a Q&A. Do you have any questions? I felt like this playing it, what did you feel like? This is where it came from. Ask me questions.” Just getting into the nitty-gritty of seeing the mechanics of it.
Voidspace:
That’s so meta. That is beautiful.
One reason I’m doing these interviews is because I want to see more documentation of these sorts of shows, where more often than not there isn’t a script.
For Life Choices you made these beautiful backdrops out of kebab flyers and late night detritus, which looks like it was incredibly stressful to set up. And it was beautiful. We’ve got photos, and we are talking about it now, which is something.
Hakan Akgül:
My director couldn’t come see it. They were away. We had this discussion with them about covering the windows and walls of the studio with stuff. I said, I think I have an idea. I’ll do it. And when the pictures came out and I sent them the pictures, they were like, “You’ve gone insane.”
Voidspace:
How long did it take you to make them?
Hakan Akgül:
It was a couple of nights. At many points, I was like, what am I doing with my life?
Voidspace:
The things we do for our art. It was worth it.
What were some of the other mini games?
Hakan Akgül:
What I originally wanted was to just give you the beginning, like, “Hi! I’m in the middle of the street. I don’t have my watch and I need it. And you can tell me what to do.” But I tested it with friends, and it immediately backfired.
It does not work. If I just tell you that we can do anything, you don’t understand how the game is played.
Voidspace:
Yes – you need more of a structure in place.
Hakan Akgül:
I realised I needed to start very basic, with choices A or B. Then build it to A, B, or C, then A, B, C, or D. Then have a mini game, and then an ending where we figure this out together.
Voidspace:
So by the end, the agency expands. I like that.
Hakan Akgül:
What I learned from this experience was that I definitely needed options for different kinds, or different levels, of interaction, because not everybody was up for the same level of interaction. Even when we chose to go dancing, a lot of people did not want to dance.
Voidspace:
How did you deal with that in the moment?
Hakan Akgül:
I just tried to use my charm, and be like, “It’s fine, no matter how much you dance, it’s okay. Look at me, I’m doing silly dances. If I’m the silliest, you can be silly too, so you shouldn’t be embarrassed.” Bringing out the joy of it.
But I think developing it further, it definitely needs different levels of engagement options for people. Different levels of interaction are important.
That’s something I didn’t fully know from TTRPGs, because more or less everybody in a TTRPG is engaging on the same level, doing the same actions. Some people might be quieter and need more pushing from you, or maybe need not to be pushed. But on a basic level, they’re engaging with the system.
Voidspace:
Everyone’s there to play.
Hakan Akgül:
Yeah, to the same level.
In a TTRPG setting, it’s mostly just trying to figure out what the person wants from this game and trying to let them have it. To facilitate them having it, as a game master.
If they want to write a story basically with their character acting and everything, you try to give them the best story they can act in it. You try to give them role-playing moments where they can just enjoy themselves. And some people just want a puzzle to solve within a game. They just want to figure out the mystery or the story and just get to the end.
And then, some people actually just want you to tell them a story. Even if they’re sitting at a table with you and it’s their characters, they still want you to say, your character had a happy ending, or whatever. And they won’t do it themselves. It happened to me when I tried to figure out this one group of players, parents who were playing with their kids. I was racking my brain because they weren’t doing anything the whole time. I thought, “Am I doing something wrong?”
At some point, I just realised that they just wanted a good night story for their kids. I started taking the reins, and the more I took them, I saw them get relaxed, get into it as far they could. I was like, “So you basically wanted me to tell you a fairy tale?” That’s how it went. At the end, they were all happy about it.
Voidspace:
Were you doing this professionally with groups of people that you didn’t necessarily know?
Hakan Akgül:
Yeah, that’s right.
Voidspace:
You must learn so much from doing that, because those skills are exactly what you need as a facilitator. Some people think that the thing you need is to be a good actor, and some people think that you need to be a good player yourself. But actually, what you need to be a good facilitator is to be sensitive to what’s happening for people, and making sure that they’re looked after.
I’m guessing it’s something that you’ve learned from the experience of making Life Choices, that when you’re making a theatre experience as opposed to a role-playing one – I guess because it’s less open-ended to an extent – you need to build in some of those different types of engagement more explicitly.
Hakan Akgül:
The most I’ve had at my table at a TTRPG was eight people, and that was insane. Eight people at the same table. I turned one into a bird. I was like: “You can’t talk.”, because I can’t have eight people talking. That’s it. You are a bird now.
But even with eight people, I was still figuring it out. Learning them and figuring them out one by one. But with a minimum of 20 people in this interactive show, there’s no way I can memorise what’s happening with each and every one of them within 15 minutes.
Voidspace:
And also, you don’t have weeks.
Hakan Akgül:
I can do it within the first hour of a game, even if I’ve never met the people, because I have done professional D&D for a long time, and I’ve learned to read people easily, because they also want to tell you.
The other day, I was running a game, and one and a half hours into it, they went into a village. I just said, “The people you want to talk to are in the tower. Do you go to the tower or do you want to look around?” And one of them just said, “Can you give me a description of the village? Because I don’t actually fully know what I’m looking at. I actually want to be in this story. I want to be in the world.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, thank you for telling me what player you are. From now on, I got you.” And at the end, he was happy with everything, because I kept throwing him story beats and description beats and the world beats.
But with 20 people, I think I need them to tell me immediately. I need them to be holding cups, going, “This a red solo cup. This means I’m not ready today”, things like that. I need that immediately.
Voidspace:
That’s interesting, getting people to self-identify. What would happen if you ended up with everyone wanting a red cup, though?
Hakan Akgül:
I would love it.
Let’s say, if a red cup is the most engagement in a spectrum, and a blue cup is the least, I expected everyone to be either red or orangeish. I did not expect any blues. But it was about half and half.
So there are a lot of options for it to be more inclusive. It’s just going to be a matter of trial and error.
Voidspace:
What were the other activities in Life Choices?
Hakan Akgül:
I structured it using the 5 Room Dungeon method. It’s a design structure. Except I do six rooms. I don’t like five because the 5 Room Dungeon structure is: Entrance and Guardian, puzzle or roleplay challenge, the twist, the climax, the reward. I don’t want to choose between puzzle or roleplay. So, I do the puzzle and role play.
Voidspace:
That actually follows your classic narrative, like your five-act tragedy. Can I ask where that structure comes from?
Hakan Akgül:
RPG designer John Fourr first came up with the 5 Room Dungeon structure, and now it’s just everywhere online.
Voidspace:
Can you tell me a little bit more about how it works?
Hakan Akgül:
I use the 5 Room Dungeon as a starting point to help me understand what I’m trying to go for. And then I just go inside and play around with it.
The Guardian for me was the monologue, where I let people choose numbers before starting. Behind the cards with the numbers on, there are little questionnaires. So they can start with some prepared answers to things. Those are the questions I’ll ask them during the opening bit – like the first room, the Guardian – with the monologue.
I realised, even if you want to participate in these things, the first moment of participation is always too tense. You don’t know what to say.
But the second time around, you’re more comfortable because you got the first nervousness out. So I was trying to help them go through the first one by preparing it beforehand. Some of them would have an open-ended question that they could answer, like what moniker should I have? Or think of an item that is dear to you and how you got it, who gifted it to you, et cetera.
And in the monologue that’s opening, I would just set the scene, set what the story is about. And in bits, I would ask, number two, can you give me the item you were talking about? I’m going to talk about my watch, so can you give me your story and I’ll just tell you mine about my watch so we can just have this conversation of sharing.
Voidspace:
I love that technique, getting people to relate the show to their own experiences. It’s a really powerful tool for immersion.
Hakan Akgül:
I used this in a TTRPG game, and it worked so beautifully. The party were in the hills. There was this demon, and I wanted it to look like the most ugliest, grotesque thing you could ever think of. Before you could see it, you would smell it.
To describe the smell, I was racking my brain, trying to think of the worst smell in the world. In the end I just said to the players: “I want you to close your eyes and think of the worst smell you’ve ever smelt in your life. Something that made you vomit, maybe.” Everybody goes, “oh,” because they’re doing it. “It smells like that.”
Voidspace:
Yeah, it’s all in the head.
Hakan Akgül:
It’s great because you made it for me. I didn’t even have to describe it to you. You’ve made the description, and it’s more visceral than anything I could say.
And after that, we find out that he lost the watch. Before retracing his steps, we need to figure out where he is. So we make a map together. The rest of the numbers have pieces of a map behind them. That’s the puzzle.
The audience need to talk to each other, to have an engagement in a casual sense. It’s not just me in the spotlight. We’re all talking to each other, and we’re just getting together to make a map together. Going, “Hi! I have this piece”. It’s easing you into the talking, and participating in it.
After they make the map, we decide on the first location. The first three options are Paradise Club, Bad Decisions Vape Store, or Deterministic Sandwich Shop, which are the three places he’s been to. And I made the map like a child’s workbook. So it’s like his mind of what London looks like. Vapes Store is like three streets away from Paradise Club, and there’s a church in between, and there’s that smelly street, et cetera. It’s not like real street names or stuff. And All three of these locations have different mini-games.
Paradise Club was a dancing game. Vapes Store was a participation game where I am nervous about these bad decisions I’m making, vaping, drinking, ruining my body, upsetting my parents, et cetera. And I need to build up some confidence in myself and not be ashamed of myself to talk to the clerk about the CCTV,or to see if he remembers me. And for that, I need you to share some of your mistakes with me.
So everybody, one by one, shares something that they think is societally wrong, or that their parents wouldn’t be proud of. And everybody who agrees applauds. So we all know we’re not alone.
The chicken shop was trying to remember my subway order by recreating it. And it’s physical. You become a tomato. How do you look? Be a tomato physically. How do you do it? Express yourself in silly ways.
All three of them end with the person I talk to as one of the audience members, and I hand them the monologue the person gives me.
It’s always very sad. The person says, “You looked like you were hungry. You needed attention to survive in life. You just want somebody to see you in life, and it was miserable to watch”, et cetera. It’s soul crushing .
And the person always says you weren’t wearing a watch. Vape Store goes like, “Yu think you’re special because you vape? Nobody’s special in life. Everybody makes bad decisions, and everybody’s ruining their lives. Life means nothing”, et cetera. “No, you weren’t wearing a watch”.
And the subway order, I think that’s the funniest bit because as soon as you make the subway order, you go to the guy, he goes like, “The usual?” You make the same choice every day. You come here every day. It’s like your life has no choice in it. You think you’re choosing this path, but you chose nothing again because you do the same thing every night.
Voidspace:
I love it when shows have decisions that just show you have no choice.
Hakan Akgül:
But then that situation is one of many. I decided to judge it by the situation. So if we went through one mini game too fast, it’s fine, we can do another one. If it took us too long, I would say, “Oh, that was the first place I went to before Mike’s house and karaoke. So it must be one of those”, and I would guide people towards that. Those are the two last locations, Mike’s house and karaoke.
Voidspace:
Nice. That in-built flexibility is really good. Giving everyone a satisfying experience and running to time.
Hakan Akgül:
And at Mike’s house, you write a love letter. I admit in the play, I wiki-howed it: Steps to writing a love letter. And I ask those questions to people, to this one person, to describe that thing about their loved one. One of the questions is: what was the first moment you realised you were in love with them? And I asked the person to think of someone they love. It doesn’t have to be romantic. What was the first moment you realised you were in love with them? And they give a very earnest, nice answer.
Then I turned to someone else, asking “Can you turn that into a phrase?” And I write it in the love letter. And after eight phrases, it’s usually this jumble of really funny things, but has heart to it.
Karaoke is trying to sing songs with the audience. I start the rhyme, they start the song, I try to finish the rhyme. Sometimes I start the rhyme, they start to finish it. It’s still in the words. It’s not fully working. That’s why I cheated and went to Mike’s house immediately.
Voidspace:
What happens at Mike’s house?
Hakan Akgül:
It has to do with the story. Ellie, is the person who is the only friend this guy has, and the watch was a gift from her. That’s why it’s important. He can’t lose it.
At the end of the love letter, it is revealed that Mike is Ellie’s boyfriend, who we are writing this love letter to. So I asked the audience, do I send it or do I not? Do I put it through his door or do I not? And everybody said yes that time, except for one person. I loved one person saying no, and I asked why She said, “Grow up. You can’t do that to people. That’s not fair. You can’t do that to your friend. Even if it’s not your friend, you can’t put Mike through that”. I was like, “You’re so engaged. Thank you”. Because the room said yes.
So these were all role plays in my head, the second room.
And after that, you get robbed, which is the plot twist. This bit is like a game of quick decisions, fight, freeze, fawn. People shouting at me, going “Do this, do that”. And I say, “I do that. And this happens”.
Depending on all our decisions, I wanted at least the ending to be just like, “I write the first line and you take it with me and we see where it ends”. So I wrote three different options: one where he dies in that mugging, and I immediately go, I don’t have any experience of dying, so I can’t describe it to you. Instead let’s do a postmortem of the whole show and turn this into a Q&A.
And we dissect everything, and how it should have ended or whatever. One ending is very angry. We try to destroy everything. It’s destroying things, a stop sign, my jacket. Then we say “Let’s destroy patriarchy, the Church of England, capitalism, the system, people who stand on the wrong side of the escalators. How do we destroy that?” We write a manifesto together. We’re going to change it all.
And the blue ending is what happened: when they picked the right things all the time. So I just turn to them and be like, “I’m not here about a watch anymore. You guys are amazing at life. I suck at life. Here is a list of questions I need answers to.” Can you tell me how to do these things?
Some of them are silly. Like if the escalator has a handrail, and it’s too dirty to touch, do I not touch it? But it’s dangerous to not hold it. So what do I do? And somebody just said, “Use your elbows.”
But some of the questions, towards the end are like, how do you make new friends? And how do you make old friends? How do you fuck up but still continue living? How do you look at yourself in the mirror and still continue living with yourself? How do you sleep at night? Trying to actually figure out what life is.
Voidspace:
That sounds deep. But then I suppose if you’ve had people making good decisions, then the tone of it matches the tone that you’ve been getting from people as well.
Hakan Akgül:
That did happen. When we did it, it was between the Q&A and this, and I felt like the energy of the room would benefit more if I just asked them deep questions instead of getting them to ask me questions. I didn’t feel like they were going to ask me questions if I did a Q&A right then. Because they’re not trying to puzzle it out right now.
Voidspace:
I’d love to see how this develops as you get more audiences through. I’d love to hear about anything that you’ve learned through this process. It’s so interesting to apply GM techniques and dynamics into a theatrical environment. Knowing how to run it, but also understanding how to make it theatrical.
Hakan Akgül:
The main thing I got from the whole experience was that there’s a huge community of lovely people who do these things, and live for these things. I met so many people, and I talked to so many people, and they were all so engaged in conversations, so interested in anything I would have to say. I was interested in theirs, and it just felt nice being in that space, sharing this and getting people to talk to me about it.
And I think mainly I learned, going forward with this project, I need definitely more structural help for the audience members that make them understand things. Recap stuff. There’s some information that is always available to me, even if I get lost. And more visual aids are always really good. More help, definitely, with different levels of engagement.
One thing I realised was that I was mos worried about the parts I wrote down and was handing to people. Between locations, I would give somebody some description to read out. At the end, the description would be like, end it however you like, or something like that. End this whole description. Bring it to a finale.
I was afraid of that bit because it’s half a page of just somebody reading. But those bits worked so well because it gave people some moments to calm down and just go up and just read something. They know exactly what is happening. They don’t need to come up with anything. And by the end of the page, it’s just one sentence that is asked of them. And they came up with great sentences. I was like, This is working beautifully.
I should maybe let people engage more in ways that don’t necessarily involve making choices, because choice is stressful. And I guess I forget, especially if you’re not used to these things, you overthink your choices a lot. But if you’re really used to these kinds of games, you don’t always overthink your every choice because you’re like, okay, there’ll be many more. It’s fine.
Voidspace:
Finally, do you have any advice for aspiring creators in this space.
Hakan Akgül:
I think the main difference between any other storytelling forms that I have experienced in my life and this sort of work is that you can’t know what you need to do until you start testing it. You don’t know how people are going to engage with it until you make people play it.
If it’s just a pen and paper test with your parents in the house, just let them do it. Your parents in the house are probably the best audience members because they’re probably not used to these things, and they’re going to give you the basics you need to set to make people understand what they’re doing.
So, I think, test it. Test it with people who have never done this. Test it with people who have done this all the time. Just keep testing it at every level. Don’t let it sit in your drawer.
Voidspace:
Yes. Get it out there. Test, test, and test again. Beautiful.