In our ongoing Edinburgh Fringe 2026 interview series, we are speaking to artists and creatives who are bringing their shows to the Scottish capital this summer.
In this interview, we speak with Michael Kohl about Extra Lives.
What can you tell me about your show?
Extra Lives is an interactive video game concert where the audience collectively becomes the main character in a choose-your-own-adventure story. Everyone uses their phones to vote on what our protagonist should do next, and those decisions determine where the story goes while three live musicians perform the soundtrack.
It’s part concert, part comedy, part video game and part storytelling experiment. Not even the three Extra Lives musicians know exactly where the story will go!
How would you describe the style of your show to anyone who has never seen you before?
Extra Lives is an interactive video game concert where the audience collectively becomes the main character in a choose-your-own-adventure story. Everyone uses their phones to vote on what our protagonist should do next, and those decisions determine where the story goes while three live musicians perform the soundtrack.
It’s part concert, part comedy, part video game and part storytelling experiment. Not even the three Extra Lives musicians know exactly where the story will go!
How would you describe the style of your show to anyone who has never seen you before?
It's part concert, part comedy, part bedtime story. Visually and musically, we pull heavily from the video games many of us grew up with in the ‘80s, ‘90s and 2000s, but you don’t need to know anything about video games to play along. Underneath all the pixels it’s really a room full of strangers trying to agree on what one increasingly unfortunate protagonist should do next!
What was the lightbulb moment that led to the creation of this piece?
Extra Lives actually grew out of something much smaller. We've been playing live arrangements of classic video game music for 10 years and wanted to find a way to make the audience active participants instead of having them sit politely and listen.
The realization was that video games already had the answer: give them control. Once the audience could make decisions that genuinely changed what happened next, it stopped being a concert with a minor interactive gimmick and became this wonderfully unpredictable hybrid of a concert, game and story.
What makes 2026 the perfect year for this specific story or performance?
This is a particularly strange year for Extra Lives because the show has quietly grown into something much bigger than I ever expected. We’ve now performed more than 150 engagements across 15+ countries, and this is somehow our first Edinburgh Fringe.
We’re also leaving Edinburgh almost immediately for a 34-day tour of Australia and New Zealand. So Fringe feels less like the premiere of a new show and more like the moment we’re figuring out what the next, much larger version of this project might become.
How have you mentally and physically prepared for a run at the Fringe?
I don’t think I did! I arrived in Edinburgh directly from a performance in a fairly remote part of North America, and have spent most of August adjusting to the demanding tempo of Fringe and learning as I go.
If you couldn’t use a flyer to attract audiences, what object would you hand out to people to get them into your show?
A video game controller with just two buttons: 'A' and 'B.' Any person who immediately wants to press one is probably our audience!
What is the one item in your Fringe Survival Kit that you can’t live without at the Fringe?
My laptop. It runs both my email and Extra Lives' interactive show tech. (If it falls into the Firth of Forth, I’m going with it!)
What would you deem as success at the end of the Fringe?
I came here wanting two things. The first was to find out whether Extra Lives could work in the completely insane ecosystem that is Edinburgh Fringe, in front of audiences who had no previous relationship with us; the second was to meet people who might help us figure out where this thing can go next. I’ve spent years building the show and booking it internationally myself, and we’re reaching the point where the opportunity is becoming bigger than what I can sensibly manage alone.
If we leave Edinburgh with new audiences, a few meaningful professional relationships and a clearer path toward the next few years of touring, I’ll consider that an enormous success.
What are you most proud of regarding the show?
That it actually works across ages and cultures. We’ve put audiences in a room together from every different background imaginable and somehow they still start arguing over whether their protagonist should fight a ferocious dragon or attempt to negotiate with it, or what button they should push on an evil-looking elevator.
Also, there’s something I find genuinely moving about watching a ten-year-old kid and somebody’s 60-year-old dad both recognize a piece of their childhood in the same show. That’s ultimately what I want Extra Lives to do.
Other than your own show, are there any other shows you would recommend at the Fringe this year?
I saw an incredible show called "Planet of the Grapes" in which two talented puppeteers reenacted the entire plot of the Planet of the Apes film using, well, grapes. I was blown away by the creativity and skill on display in this small production.
What is one Edinburgh spot that you would recommend people to visit when they're not watching performances?
You need an industry badge to access it, but the Library Bar at Gilded Balloon Teviot has become a real oasis here amidst the maelstrom of Fringe. It's one of the only places I can reliably get away from the hustle and bustle to catch up on emails!
Can you describe the show in 5 words?
The audience holds the controller.
What keeps you inspired?
Watching people surprise us! We’ve performed these stories enough times that I know every branch, every musical cue and every terrible consequence of every decision, but we still don’t know what each particular room is going to do, or which direction a given audience member will advocate for.
Sometimes an audience makes a decision I’ve seen hundreds of times and reacts to it in a completely new way. Sometimes a kid notices something none of the adults noticed. Sometimes 100 strangers become bizarrely passionate about a choice I thought would be trivial. Everyone brings something unique to an Extra Lives show, and that unpredictability keeps the show alive for me.
What would you hope someone takes away from seeing the show?
A positive piece of their childhood, without question! Video games are incredibly good at attaching themselves to memories. Sometimes it’s a particular melody, sometimes a sound effect, sometimes just the feeling of sitting next to a sibling or friend passing a controller back and forth.
You don’t need to recognize every reference in Extra Lives. If somebody walks out having unexpectedly reconnected with one of those memories, or having made a new one with a room full of strangers, we’ve done what I hoped we’d do.
When and where can people see the show?
Extra Lives is at Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose every night this month at 6:05pm. (After that, we’re packing everything up and heading almost immediately to Australia and New Zealand for 34 days of touring... because apparently Edinburgh Fringe wasn’t exhausting enough!)
Extra Lives runs at the Edinburgh Fringe until Monday 31st August 2026. For tickets and more information visit https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/extra-lives-the-interactive-video-game-concert
For more information about the work beyond the Fringe visit https://extralives.band/
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