A STREAMING SERVICE FOR IMPROV NERDS SOLD OUT THE GARDEN

HOW DROPOUT BECAME THE INDUSTRY'S UNLIKELIEST SUCCESS STORY.

- By JESSE DAVID FOX

WELCOME to the Unsleeping City, a magical New York overrun with the ghosts of crooked cops and members of a fairy mafia. Seven actors had gathered onstage at Madison Square Garden to occupy the fantasy world designed by Brennan Lee Mulligan, the game master for Dimension 20, a streaming show based around Dungeons & Dragons. This was a live one-off episode. Fireballs erupted around the actors as if they were pro wrestlers rather than a group of improv comedians enacting a tabletop role-playing game. The last time they performed in New York, in 2019, it was for 250 people. Tonight, a sold-out audience of nearly 20,000 fans had filled the Garden, to the cast’s surprise. “Everyone I’ve told about Madison Square Garden is like, ‘Oh, is there a smaller room at Madison Square Garden?’” Ally Beardsley, one of the actors, said beforehand.

In the game, Beardsley plays a drug dealer who wears a medical bracelet—from his recent top surgery—that gives him powers. Midway through, Beardsley broke character. “Fun fact,” they said as they rolled a pair of dice. “When I made this character, in his med bracelet was testosterone—which is not in pill form. Now I know.” Beardsley came out as trans shortly after Dimension 20 started. In the intervening years, they learned that testosterone is taken by injection. Their hairstyle changed and their voice deepened. In one episode, they made a joke about a bad dice roll making them so mad it burst their top-surgery stitches. Everyone in the audience had watched Dimension 20 from the beginning and witnessed Beardsley transition in real time, regularly weighing in online to express how much they adored them. “Every time I cut my hair,” one fan wrote, “I dedicate the hair to Ally and pray to the gender gods that my hair will look half as hot as theirs.”

Premiering in 2018,