The street as stage: locative storytelling and digital empathy in ‘getting a job at Nikki’s place’

‘The Street as Stage’ examines the locative, augmented reality game ‘Getting a Job at Nikki’s Place’. The game serves as an interpretive case study for understanding digital media as an act of performance and as a space for cultivating digital empathy. Drawing on literature of virtual and augmented reality, performance studies, and digital empathy, the article argues that the game opens the door for a performative act of cultural witnessing. In the game, players navigate the streets of Parramore, a neighborhood in Orlando, Florida, following in the footsteps of restaurateur Nick Aiken, owner of Nikki’s Place. Their embodied movement through space becomes an encounter with layered memory and lived experience. The participatory mode of engagement positions the play as both audience and performer through the game’s use of locative triggers, visual overlays, narrative tasks, and Aiken’s voiceovers. The use of augmented reality becomes a stage for co-presence, empathy, and relational understanding. By situating the project within emerging scholarship on spatial storytelling and embodied media, the ‘The Street as Stage’ demonstrates how digital performance environments can reconfigure urban space as a medium for empathy.