By Stacy M. Brown, Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
Flavor Flav once declared, โ9-1-1 is a joke.โ He was calling out the deadly indifference to Black lives embedded in institutions sworn to protect. But as grotesque as systemic neglect is, perhaps nothing in recent memory has so vividly illustrated American democracyโs fragilityโand its capacity for collective delusionโas the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Now, nearly five years later, that real-life nightmare has metastasized into a sprawling cultural industry of documentaries, books, board games, performance art, and even a participatory stage show where you can choose to โhangโ the vice president.
From Four Hours at the Capitol on HBO to American Insurrection on PBS Frontline, media have exhaustively dissected every angle of that day: the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, the false prophets of โStop the Steal,โ the elected officials who turned complicity into a career strategy. Cassidy Hutchinsonโs memoir, enough, peeled back the layers of cowardice and calculation within Trumpโs White House. A speculative graphic novel, 1/6, imagines what might have happened if the attackers had succeeded in overturning the government. But perhaps the most provocativeโand unsettlingโmanifestation of this new genre is playing out in Londonโs West End. Inside the Stone Nest theater, Fight for America! Dare audiences to reenact the insurrection themselves.
In this genre-defying hybrid of tabletop wargame and interactive performance, attendees are sorted into โTeam Blue,โ defending the Capitol, or โTeam Red,โ storming it. Each side is handed a script of grievances and given dice, action cards, and thousands of meticulously painted miniaturesโsome waving โOverturn Bidenโ banners, others decked in riot shields. The re-creation includes a 14-foot-wide model of the Capitol and a costumed Uncle Sam gamemaster, who prowls the floor as a ringmaster of civic mayhem. The show was conceived by American theater producers Christopher McElroen and Neal Wilkinson, who initially planned to debut it in the United States. But after Trumpโs re-election in 2024, they relocated the premiere to London, hoping that some 3,000 miles of ocean would create enough distance for reflection.
The show culminates in a decision point: the audience must vote whether to execute Vice President Mike Pence. According to organizers, out of 24 London performances, 18 audiences voted to โhangโ him. One participant, unnerved by the crowdโs enthusiasm, managed to talk them out of it in the final minutes, an uncomfortable reminder that even in play, the mob can hunger for violence. While the creators insist the experience is designed to โspark self-reflectionโ on polarization and mob mentality, it is hard to ignore the absurdity of paying for the privilege of pretending to kill elected officials. In her review, London critic Mary Beer compared the experience to Marina Abramoviฤโs Rhythm 0, in which audiences were allowed to inflict real harm on the artist. Except here, the harmโrhetorical and symbolicโechoes an actual event that killed police officers and traumatized an entire nation.
Elsewhere, the commodification of January 6 has taken other shapes. A parody board game, Storm the Capitol, lets players choose to be โpatriotsโ or law enforcement. An interactive wargame and art installation called Fight for America! Invites participants to maneuver figurines around a to-scale model of the Capitol as they reenact the breach. In London, the theater production includes real video footage of the attackโan eerie coda that pulls players back from their simulated conquest into the reality that this was no abstraction. In a sign of just how thoroughly this day has been transformed into content, an 18-year-oldโs decision to report his father to the FBI became the basis for a stage play called Fatherland. And the flood of works shows no sign of slowing. A Washington, D.C., run of Fight for America! is slated for January 2026 to mark the fifth anniversary of the attack, landing at a moment when Trump has returned to power and granted clemency to all but 14 convicted January 6 defendants.
This explosion of entertainment products, from tabletop spectacles to streaming exposรฉs, raises an unsettling question: How should a society process an attempted coup that almost ended the American experiment? Are we memorializing a civic tragedyโor trivializing it?
For many, the answer lies in whether these projects foster genuine reflection or simply feed the cultural appetite for spectacle. As McElroen told The Washington Post, โIf you donโt participate in democracy, it doesnโt work.โ But if democracy can be reduced to a gameโcomplete with dice rolls, scoring systems, and Instagrammable photo opsโthen the lesson may be more sinister: when the violence is over, the market will find a way to package it. โThe insurrection wasnโt a joke,โ Carrie Frazier, a D.C. resident who said she recently returned from London but didnโt see the show. โBut in 2025, it is entertainment.โ
