from Amazon Fall out the series was a major boon for Fallout 76bringing new players and a renewed focus on the game in its current state. It's a much-needed boost from the rocky first impression the game made, though the show also inspired something else — a staple of his recent performance Richard III from Wasteland Theater Company. Game Rant spoke with Wasteland Theater Acting Artistic Director Jonathan Thomas, known in-game as Bramadew, about their adaptation of the Shakespeare classic into a Fallout 76-Theme piece I call it Richard the Ghoul.
The war with the grim image never changes, not even in Fallout
For the uninitiated, Wasteland Theater Company was born at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time that made the company's founders think back to Shakespeare's era. In the Bard's time, the bubonic plague closed the playhouses, just as the pandemic closed the theatres. There was also the vaguely apocalyptic feel of the early days of the pandemic, whose images evoked the idea of a post-society wasteland.
Although other virtual theaters like it Final Fantasy 14A Stage Reborn predates the pandemic, the field today remains largely new, fresh for pioneering bands like Wasteland Theatre. So performing pieces like Coriolanus, Romeo and Julietand even Alice in Wonderland adapted for Fall out the set is still of great historical importance to the performing arts.
The latest in this legacy is Richard IIIor as it is called in the Wasteland Theater production, Richard the Ghoul. The title may somewhat evoke the character of Walton Goggins from the Amazon series, and this is no accident. Thomas says that The Ghoul character was the inspiration for the adaptation.
“The Disfigurement of Richard. I changed this to a ghoul because this is a very common disease you will encounter in the wasteland. There are wild and non-wild ghouls, and the non-wild have found a way to integrate back into the growing and rebuilding society.
Having Richard, who historically had scoliosis and would have been considered less of a person at the time, and changing him into a ghoul was so easy and it fit in the universe.”
It's not the only nod Fall outAmazon's series in play. Since Richard is marrying his cousin in the play, the company borrowed from one of Lucy's lines at the beginning of the show: “Having sex with your cousin is not a sustainable way to keep the vault alive.” Although beyond those two points and a choice to put Shady Sands in the foreground, Thomas said the show had less of an impact on the play than other parts of the franchise. Thomas said that audiences responded very well to their adaptation:
“We have a lot of support from the community itself; other live streamers, people who do podcasts or do fan fiction or whatever, and they're all very supportive.
They're into live streams, they'll even try to get on the server and watch it in person if they can. We've felt the love from the community and people who are aware of us, and we're very grateful for that.”
How Fallout adaptations and performing arts merge
“There are three plays that the company is looking at,” Thomas explained, and which one they do next might be based on the script that's done first. Close to their successes with Shakespeare, two of the three options are Hamlet and Twelfth nightbut the Wasteland Theater deviates from the Bard from time to time.
After all, they've done works by Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens, and the third one I'm looking at is Aristotle. LATCHES (it will probably be playfully titled Radtoads). LATCHES would pull from Amazon Fall out serials, too, because the corporations of the antebellum world make great analogues for the Greek gods:
“You know, on the show where you have the boardroom of all the different CEOs—Vault-Tec and REPCONN and RobCo and stuff—talking about using nukes to have a reason to test the vaults. The general population is always at the whim of these larger entities
Fall out
; different corporations.This, we believe, translates very well into
LATCHES
because humanity realizes, “Oh, the gods are actually in control and there's nothing we can do. We are only at the whims of their mercy'”.
Be that as it may LATCHES, Twelfth nightor HamletWasteland Theater Company is always accepting new players for its next show. Those interested in joining Wasteland Theater can contact X (formerly Twitter) at @76Theatre, although Thomas cautions that most of their work requires the PlayStation version of the game. However, Thomas says they always bring in at least one new person per show and look forward to meeting them for their next play.