Adrienne Mackey

Mining the potential of performance and play, Adrienne Mackey is an interdisciplinary creator working at the intersection of theater and game design. Under the moniker Swim Pony, she’s created original works, including SURVIVE! – a 22,000 sq-ft interactive installation exploring the cosmic scale; THE BALLAD OF JOE HILL – a folk musical about the famed IWW labor icon created at Eastern State Penitentiary; LADY M – a feminist re-imagining of Macbeth; and AQUA MAROONED!, a card game commissioned by the Alliance for Watershed Education, that distributed 15,000 free copies over three states, inviting diverse audiences to explore nature through humor, reflection, and sensory experience.  

Her recent work fuses performance and transmedial technologies: TRAILOFF – a mobile app that uses GPS to unlock binaural audio stories as users walk nature trails; THE END – a month-long mixed-reality game about mortality played via text message; WAR OF THE WORLDS, a community performance and app exploring gentrification as alien invasion with Drexel’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio; and THE STUPIDEST, SCARIEST TIME, an interactive theatrical roleplay about America’s obsession with productivity. Selected accolades include an Independence Fellowship, two Knight Arts Challenges, a Philly Magazine “Best Of” for TRAILOFF, a Global Innovation Fund award, over $1M in grant funding (NEA, Barra, William Penn), and residencies at Loghaven, Orchard Project, and Blast Theory. Mackey is also a trained chemist and heads the directing program at UW’s School of Drama.