Playing Hamlet Inside a Video Game During Lockdown: How Storytelling Helps Us Navigate Uncertainty

By Emiliano Rodríguez Nuesch

When COVID-19 shut down theaters, actors, directors, and playwrights around the world faced an existential crisis. Live performances rely on physical presence, shared space, and real-time interaction—all impossible under lockdown. But what if the stage could be anywhere? What if Shakespeare’s Hamlet could unfold not in a grand theater but in the virtual streets of Grand Theft Auto Online?

At first glance, GTA Online might seem like an odd choice for Shakespeare. Known for high-speed chases, chaotic crime sprees, and explosive action, GTA is not the kind of place where one expects to find soliloquies about existential despair. Yet, in the midst of uncertainty, a group of artists transformed an open-world video game into a space for collective storytelling, artistic resilience, and unexpected human connection.

Gaming, Storytelling, and Psychological Coping

The COVID-19 pandemic created a global crisis of isolation. People searched for ways to connect, create, and find meaning. For many, video games became more than entertainment—they became a way to cope. Studies show that gaming can provide emotional regulation, social connection, and a sense of agency during crises.

Grand Theft Hamlet took this even further: instead of rehearsing in a controlled space, the actors had to adapt to the unpredictable nature of an online game. The game world became a metaphor for uncertainty itself—random players, chaotic events, and sudden disruptions mirrored the unpredictability of life under lockdown.

Why Hamlet? A Pandemic Play for a Pandemic World

Of all the plays that could have been staged inside a game, why Hamlet?

Hamlet is a story about uncertainty, about struggling to act in a world where the consequences of every choice are unclear. That same uncertainty defined life during the pandemic. We asked ourselves the same questions Hamlet does: Do I act or wait? Who can I trust? What happens next?

The game world of GTA—lawless, unpredictable, shaped by forces beyond our control—became a modern Elsinore, a place where power, surveillance, and instability ruled. The tension between Shakespeare’s structured verse and the chaotic digital world of GTA created a new kind of tragedy, one shaped by randomness, improvisation, and the impossibility of control.

One of the most surprising aspects of Grand Theft Hamlet was the way strangers in GTA Online became part of the performance. Some helped escort actors safely across the game world. Others, fascinated by what they saw, stayed to watch. A few even volunteered to play roles, turning the streets of Los Santos into a stage where fiction and reality blurred.

The presence of random players made each performance unique—an unpredictable collaboration between the planned and the spontaneous. A play that was written centuries ago became a living, dynamic experience shaped by whoever happened to be in the game at that moment.

A Play That Became More Than a Play

In the end, Grand Theft Hamlet was not just about finding a place to perform Shakespeare when theaters were closed.

A 400-year-old play reimagined in a modern, lawless digital world. A story of uncertainty performed in the most uncertain of times. An experiment in collaboration and improvisation that mirrored the reality of the pandemic itself.

Through Hamlet, the performers and audience alike got to experience something unique: a space where art, technology, and human connection merged into a new form of storytelling.