Set in contemporary Iran, this interactive, trailblazing vision from iNK Stories puts Lady Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most iconic female leads, front and centre.

This cross-industry collaboration marks the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) debut in video gaming. Starring Cannes Best Actress winner Zar Amir as Lady Macbeth (Lili), the game is co-produced by her Paris-based Alambic Production. Amir draws from her lived experience as an Iranian woman in exile who has courageously confronted her own battles against authoritarian gendered oppression.

Lili is a screen life thriller video game which gives players access to Lady Macbeth's personal devices, combining the skill and artistry of theatre and film to tell this interactive story. Players will be immersed in a stylized, neo-noir vision of modern Iran, where surveillance and authoritarianism are part of daily life. The gameplay will feature a blend of live-action cinema within an interactive game format, giving players the chance to immerse themselves in the world of Lady Macbeth and make choices that influence her destiny. 

Macbeth’s witches are reimagined as hackers, with surveillance cameras and cyber-infiltration putting the player at the heart of the story and giving them a unique perspective into the world of the play. This modern twist on the Macbeth story explores themes of technological domination, the manipulation of information, and institutional violence, reflecting the dark realities of inequities in our digital age.

“The partnership between iNK Stories and the Royal Shakespeare Company is a landmark collaboration, bringing together two creative forces to unlock the profound potential of adapting Shakespeare’s timeless masterpieces for contemporary audiences. It pushes the boundaries of storytelling, marking an inflection point in the depth of expression within commercial video games and expanding the creative vision of the RSC into new, interactive territory. A video game based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a thrilling endeavour that transforms one of literature’s darkest and most compelling tales - of gender, ambition, fate, power, and morality into an immersive, interactive experience,” said iNK Stories Co-Founder Vassiliki Khonsari.

“From its first performance, Macbeth was always exhilarating: its sudden opening with thunder and lightning raises audience adrenaline levels and propels them as participants, not just spectators, into the jittery, action-driven narrative. Lili creates similar effects for audiences. As a storytelling medium, gaming today is what theatre has always been; a chance to explore worlds, inhabit story, and experience something at once personal and communal. Centring this tense thriller around Lady Macbeth rather than her husband is radical and transformative. It turns the play’s questions around gender, identity and power inside out,” said RSC Co-Artistic Directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey.

Emma Smith, RSC Board member and leading Shakespeare academic at Hertford College, Oxford has worked on the adaptation of the text and added: “Lili takes up Shakespeare’s character-based exploration of political ambition, personal compromise, and distorted human lives under tyranny, and transports these themes to contemporary Iran. It is both utterly Shakespearean, and radically defamiliarized. Forget the old chestnut that Shakespeare would be writing for Hollywood if he were alive now: what Lili makes absolutely clear is - he’d be writing for gaming.”

Zar Amir is a French-Iranian actress, producer and director. She won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2022 for her performance in the film Holy Spider. In 2023, she co-directed the film Tatami, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Through her cinematic projects and her voice advocating for change for women in Iran, Zar was part of the BBC 100 Women 2022.

Lili is part of the RSC’s immersive and digital innovation work. It is now in development and is slated for release later in 2025.