Celia Pearce
– PLAYABLE THEATRE –
Celia Pearce is an award-winning game designer, artist, curator, author, teacher, and serial instigator. She co-founder and of IndieCade and the Playable Theatre Project, and currently holds a position as Associate Professor of Game Design at Northeastern University, where she has created games with student teams under the mantle of Paidia Studios and Pins&Needles. Her games have been featured at Come Out & Play, Different Games, Incubate, Smithsonian Indie Arcade, and BostonFIG Fest, where her game eBee (designed with Gillian Smith, Jeanie Choi and Isabella Carlsson) received the 2016 award for most Innovative Tabletop Game. Her books include Communities of Play (The MIT Press 2009) and IndieCade: A History — The Interdependence of Independence (ETC/CMU Press 2020), and she has authored/co-authored/edited numerous papers and book chapters as well as two other books. Her current research and creative practice builds on her pre-academia career as an experience designer for theme parks and is focused on the intersection between game design, live action roleplaying and theatre. Her performative and live action works have appeared at Living Games A Week in Boston, and The Night Cafe, a collection of live pieces around the heme of insomnia co-created by Kellian Pletcher-Adams and Lizzie Stark. She is a Higher Education Video Game Association (HEVGA) Fellow and was included in Game Advocacy’s “50 Over 50 Most Influential people in the Game Industry” in 2018.