By Judy Klingner, ITA President

A couple of months ago, a former colleague and good friend (Michael Karasch) asked me to add him on theater.games, a website that offers daily puzzles for show people.  I ignored his invitation.  I mean, who needs to play MORE daily games?  I can hardly remember to play Wordle every day.

I saw Karasch in person a few weeks later, and he told me I needed to get on board and start playing theater.games.  He guaranteed I would love it.  The games were web-based, but he made it easy for me to access them by putting a shortcut to the website on the home screen of my phone.  He said, "I saw another theatre teacher talking about it on TikTok, and I went to check it out.  There were only two games at the time, but it was so fun, I sent it around to friends."  Apparently, when Karasch put it on my home screen, theater.games was just a website, but now it's on both Android and Apple App Stores for free.

I don't say this often, but Karasch was right--I love theater.games!  Obviously, the ITA membership needed to know about this app.  I did some quick research and found out that the mastermind behind Theater Games is Matt Rodin, a name I recognized from my days of directing contest play and Group Interpretation.  I reached out to his former Glenbrook North High School teacher, Julie Ann Hill, and she was able to connect me with Matt.  

Here is what Matt shared with me:

"Over more than a decade of living in New York, I’ve worked across a lot of different corners of the theater world. I’ve worked red carpets, was on the national tour of Company, performed in three Off-Broadway shows last year, and worked with marketing and PR teams. My husband is an agent and has also worked in casting, so between the two of us, I’ve seen so many different sides of the business up close. One thing I’m always paying attention to is where there are gaps in the marketplace. Coming into this year, I saw one around daily games.

"There are daily games for movies, music, and of course the New York Times games that have become part of people’s routines. But there really was not anything like that specifically for theater people. And because theater fans are so passionate and deeply engaged, a daily game felt almost too perfect for the way we interact with and love this thing we all care so much about.

"I started by building Spike, a 5-clue, 1-answer game where players guess the answer as the clues move from hardest to easiest. Once I saw that people were coming back and playing every day, I decided to expand the roster. I brought on a co-founder, and now we have 5 daily theater games across different formats, including word games, a picture game, an order game, and a blocking game.

"More than 3,000 people are playing every single day, and over 550,000 theater games have been played since we launched in mid-April!! 

"One of the coolest and most unexpected parts has been hearing from educators who are using the games as a tool to teach kids about theater history. That was not the original intention, but it makes so much sense. It's interactive, fun, simple, and a much more engaging way to learn about shows, artists, and theater history than only reading from a textbook or watching a video. We are now actively working on building out the education side of Theater Games so we can help more teachers and educators use them in the classroom. That’s one of the things I am most passionate about and excited to work on over the next year."

How cool is THAT?  Thank you to Matt Rodin for creating Theater Games for theatre-lovers everywhere!  

So goodbye Wordle--Hello Theater Games!  Download the app, start playing, and invite all of your theatre friends, colleagues, and students to play along with you. I promise, you will love this app, too!