No Gutterballs Get Rolled in ‘B.O.W.L.I.N.G. Night’ (A NoPro First Look)

Stephen Colbert is walking us through the Zoom tech check. Okay, so it isn’t really Stephen Colbert, but Brett Jackson, the creator and game master of B.O.W.L.I.N.G. Night. Jackson sure sounds an awful lot like Colbert: confident intelligence peppered with delightful befuddlement and anchored with hilarious, acerbic insight.

Set in the “dystopian future year of 2020 on an isolationist Earth whose germaphobic citizens never meet,” B.O.W.L.I.N.G. Night is presented as a “future-sport called B.O.W.L.I.N.G.” in which multiple teams of human contestants “play for the entertainment of a maniacal computer.” For the duration of the evening, Jackson adopts the B.O.W.L.I.N.G. Computer persona (with the acronym’s meaning possibly revealed during the game), acting as referee and emcee for the live action game played via video chat.

(Mild spoilers follow.)

After the tech check, Jackson woos players through a nostalgic introduction, a pre-pandemic harkening of a time when folks could bowl together in spatial proximity. That opening speech includes several references to buffalo sauce-licked fingers, various physical contact, fomites (potentially contaminated surfaces), and hygienic consequences.

I laugh so hard my notes are simply: “lick sauce hole.”

This is followed by an introduction to the single, digital bowling lane. The flat, retro-style graphic, which all players utilize, consists of the “Blue Zone” (the bowler’s starting point), the “Green Zone” (the desired end zone), and in between the two, with pins in formation, is a red section, which Jackson declares with impeccable comedic timing as the “Murder Zone.”

B.O.W.L.I.N.G. Night recreates the often boozy camaraderie of recreational bowling. Several teams, generally of five to six people, compete with each other through rounds of digitized bowling interspersed with challenges loosely related to the bowling theme, such as the very serious dilemma of “performance-enhancing thumbs.” As one of the evening’s highlights, these contests incorporate breakout “locker room” sessions among individual team members and then each group improvises their presentation for the rest of the teams.

The kickoff challenge requires a team name based on three criteria: a city, a mascot, and a bowling pun. Rounding out our team of NoPro staffers is Patrick McLean, Cara Mandel, Blake Weil, and Kevin Gossett. Initially, we decide on the “Pittsburgh Pin-guins,” before officially claiming ourselves the “Istanbul Turkeys.” Our motto? Leave no ball unfingered.

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Where the experience truly succeeds is through Jackson’s talents as a game master. From the beginning moments with the tech check, Jackson creates an elementary school-like atmosphere, in which he’s a friendly and familiar substitute teacher. He walks that fine line between utter chaos and rowdy, unbridled engagement. By doing so, he offers participants the freedom to regress to a coltish state. Occupying half of our screens, the bowling “lane” immediately becomes a repository for doodling (when it isn’t hijacked for silly scribbles, Zoom’s annotation feature facilitates the actual “bowling”).

With full childhood regression underway, Patrick confirms in the chat window: “Seven minutes in and we got our first penis!”

Like passing notes behind the teacher’s back, Zoom’s chat feature quickly morphs into a place for competitive trash-talking between teams, which progresses into its own rivalry of inserting “Brett” into movie titles (during the game Jackson reveals a second character named, uh, Brett). This effort, which ultimately includes well over 150 “Brett” movie titles, is led by Cara and includes gems such as “I Know What You Brett Last Summer,” “The Hunt for Brett October,” “The Brettfast Club,” and “Bretter Off Dead.”

However, even with the furious pace of the chat’s “Brett”-fest and the more moderate rounds of bowling and challenges, there’s still too much dead air between bouts of active participation. Reflecting on the game, Patrick was keen for additional player tactics, “like try[ing] to distract other bowlers [or] something to make the competition more competitive.” Blake felt the evening ran “overly long,” but “the game rules made full use of the Zoom interface, and the breakout rooms for improv allowed everyone to flesh out the strange dystopian world.” Kevin agreed that “the show drags a little in the middle [and], weirdly, the bowling is the least interesting part.” He noted, “It’s a neat idea at first and a clever way to use Zoom, but the other team-focused improv sections are where the show shines.”

Still, Jackson maintains the game’s tone, focus, and energy through improvised, in-character banter. If watching other teams bowl isn’t particularly captivating, Jackson’s commentary is. There are sudden, comical changes to the scoring system and a surprisingly droll debate about the definition of “aspersions” versus “dispersions.” When a player fumbles with technical glitches and gameplay stalls, Jackson waits until there is a splinter of silence and then wearily exhales, “I remind you the average human lifespan is 80 years. Please bowl soon.”

The NoPro team joined a preview edition of B.O.W.L.I.N.G. Night and Jackson is candid about the game’s fluid development. Currently, the narrative for “Brett,” the second character, doesn’t pay off and the experience’s overall participation flow needs to be recalibrated. For now, there is continuous iteration and already Jackson has applied new changes based on feedback from our night of play. So if you’re seeking a reprieve, one that feels raucous and sportive, then B.O.W.L.I.N.G. Night is your ticket. As Cara said, “[I] want to recommend this game to anyone who needs a good night of absurdity with a group of friends who are… ahem… GAME.”

And our team of Turkeys? We won.

B.O.W.L.I.N.G. Night runs July 31 and August 8. Tickets are pay what you can.

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