As stated in my comment, you'll want to add export PATH=$PATH:/full/path/to/activator/directory
to your .bashrc
file.
and
activator clean compile
from the play application folder worked for me.
then
activator run
However you also want to fix the version of scala-compiler
use, and you want it to match your configured scalaVersion
:
dependencyOverrides += "org.scala-lang" % "scala-compiler" % scalaVersion.value