Tag: Theater

  • SIGNA’s Performance Installations: Walking the Liminal Border Between Larp and Theatre

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    SIGNA’s Performance Installations: Walking the Liminal Border Between Larp and Theatre

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    In the narrow hall of an old county hospital building, two rows of people stand facing each other. The Open Heart organisation has sent out an invitation to the general public to meet and stay with the people in their care. To foster empathy, they say. To become compassionate. The people in the hospital’s care stand in one line; The Sufferers, they are called. People on the fringes of society. Drug addicts, homeless people, criminals. Every single sufferer is a tragic tale of how life can beat you down. In the other line, the Compassionates stand, looking around with mixed emotions; curiosity, pity, regret. The sufferers will each choose compassionates to live their lives. Wear their clothes, sleep in their bunk, and become them for the evening and night to come.

    This is the opening scene of the performance installation Det Åbne Hjerte (Eng. The Open Heart), created by the artist collective SIGNA in Aarhus, Denmark 2019. The sufferers are paid actors and the compassionates are their audience. You might, like me, see the similarities this performance piece bears to larp. The experience requires active participation from everyone, which eliminates the border between actor and audience that is usually found in theatre. If I replace the term “actor” with “non-player character” and “audience” with “players”, it would look like a larp. Both groups exist fully within the fiction, but while the audience are there to experience it, the actors are there to facilitate and steer the experience. 

    In this article, I aim to look into the overlap between larp and theatre, with SIGNA’s performance installations, that bear resemblance to both practices, serving to guide my exploration of this liminal space. In addition I aim to tease out approaches SIGNA use, that might be gainful for our development of larp. To gain insight into the methods and intentions of how SIGNA creates what they term performance installations, which I will introduce in the upcoming chapter, I asked them for an interview, which they generously granted.

    The Performance Installation

    When I experienced Det Åbne Hjerte in 2019, I was chosen by a young, too-skinny man with bleached hair and pale skin, named Blondie. While I was being dressed in his clothes, he told me about himself, and his life. He was open, brutally honest and believable. I quickly forgot that Blondie was a fictional character.

    ”Our point of departure is to create universes that are a sort of reality simulation. Not necessarily copies of reality, but simulations of hermetically sealed universes […] These universes are then populated by characters who improvise with the audience in processes that, depending on the given work, are more or less planned. However, what they say is up to the individual participant in accordance with the framework.”

    This is how Signa Köstler describes the artform of performance installations, a concept of her own devising. With her background as an art historian, she had previously worked with the concepts of performance and installation, and the combination of these seemed to encapsulate what she did.

    The power of performance installations, according to the Köstlers, lies in the heightened engagement they elicit. This emerges from three factors: participants navigate labyrinthine spaces, experience sensorial stimuli, and build relationships with characters. In Det Åbne Hjerte, the old county hospital had doors open into washing rooms, offices, cantinas, bedrooms and so on, and it was full of smells, sounds and actions. These were tied together through the relationships. As my sufferer, Blondie, chugged a whole beer, puked all over the floor, mopped it up with his shirt and led us through the tunnels of the hospital to the washing rooms, all senses were stimulated. The unique quality of these interactions allows for genuine emotional connections, akin to the impact of cinema or theatre but with the added dimension of direct engagement from the audience.

    These real emotions and feelings, created by deep immersion and interaction with a fictional universe, begin to sound exactly like what we argue for, when we talk about the value of larp. In fact, when Simo Järvelä (2019) describes the magic circle and alibi in the article “How real is larp?”, he writes: 

    ”Designing a larp is about constructing an artificial situation that is completely real. The players treat it as fictional – which it is – but it is also something fully embodied by the players” (Järvelä 2019).

    That these two descriptions line up so well, gives us a look into the landscape where theatre and larp can meet. It is interesting to look at how the audience’s relationship to the characters are formed. Is it passive, as with traditional film and theatre, where an audience relates to the situation happening on stage, or is it active, as with larp and performance installations, where the audience builds relationships based on the actions they personally take in the fake reality? 

    There isn’t a clear cut between these two categories. In the more experimental forms of theatre, the audience often has an active role that comes near to larp or performance installations. For example, in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (London 2003), the audience is allowed to move about freely in a six-storey building transformed into a set for Shakespeare’s Macbeth, though they are separated from that reality by plastic masks. Although the audience members have little actual power to influence the experience, they are not just passively sitting and observing. This illustrates how temporal media – that is media which we experience live – can range from traditional theatre to sandbox larps. 

    Three permance artists from the SIGNA piece "Det Åbne Hjerte" sit on a bench
    Three performers from the SIGNA performance installation “Det Åbne Hjerte”. The performers depicted from left to right: Arthur Köstler, Larysa Venediktova, Stine Korsgaard. Photo by Erich Goldmann.

    Manipulation of the audience

    After arriving in the afternoon and moving among the sufferers, learning about their pain, it is time for bed. We compassionates share bunk beds with our sufferers. It quickly becomes clear that this will be no easy night. Many of the sufferers have difficulties, mental or otherwise, that trigger at night. The worst comes in the middle of the night, as one of the sufferers starts screaming. It startles me awake and as staff rush past, my curiosity battles with tiredness. As the screaming continues, curiosity wins and I drag myself out of bed to find the source. 

    SIGNA employs diverse strategies to guide the audience through specific scenes and emotions. The masterplan is a carefully orchestrated framework that serves as a roadmap for performers to interact with participants. SIGNA has different approaches to the masterplan depending on the performance installation. Sometimes the masterplan includes instructions for sending the audience between performers in predetermined patterns, other times it is almost like an itinerary that the performers follow, while the audience are free to move around in the spaces where the performance happens, as was the case with Det Åbne Hjerte. Interestingly, Signa Köstler notes that more recent plays have proven that the most optimal format is for the audience to be attached to specific performers:

    ”… Audience members are attached to one or two characters, whom they will always gravitate towards. When this attachment has been created, either of loyalty, security or the like, they [the audience member] will always come back to it. Then they can be set free a little, and they can be with others, but you can always pull them back in again pretty quickly. Then you can move about with an invisible masterplan, while they are satellites you can pull along with you.”

    The Köstlers say that the actors need to be in a “hyper-aware” mindset when they follow these master plans. Their focus is split between ensuring the picture of the scene stays in place, that the acoustics of the installation are balanced, and that the minds of the audience are engaged with the fiction. In other words, the actors need to keep in mind how the audience sees a scene and hears a scene, and to be aware of how engaged they currently are. Reading the body language of the audience becomes a crucial skill to balancing the experience, as this is a core tool in understanding what the audience currently experiences emotionally. As Signa puts it, the constant mindset is ”What can I contribute with? What needs do the audience members I am responsible for have, right now?”

    This relates interestingly to another scale of variances between larp and traditional theatre. The performers don’t need to improvise reactions to audience responses unless the audience actually has a certain degree of freedom to respond to the stimuli. In traditional theatre, the audience is expected to sit still, and clapping or crying out are the strongest responses the audience is expected to have to the events on the stage. The smaller, more nuanced reactions are usually visible only to other audience members. While they may create liveness in the room, they do not directly affect the action on stage. 

    Experimental theatre and performance installations have a higher degree of audience freedom, which introduces an element of uncertainty into the artwork. Most larps fall into the opposite end of the scale compared to traditional theatre. In larp, audience interaction is expected and needed for the artwork to progress at all. Det Åbne Hjerte performance installation is slightly more towards the larp extreme on the empathic response scale, as the audience participates actively in the action. However, it is slightly more towards the traditional theatre extreme on the audience influence scale, as the plot is made for the audience to explore it, rather than to influence it. An audience member might try to influence a cast member’s actions, but usually the cast member will still be at the next spot on their master plan itinerary. 

    Performer from the SIGNA performance installation sits on the floor surrounded by trash
    Performer from the SIGNA performance installation “Det Åbne Hjerte” sits on the floor. Depicted performer: Arthur Köstler. Photo by Erich Goldmann.

    Character handling

    One of the sufferers sits in a hallway, with a blanket with random low-quality goods spread out before her. Plastic toy dinosaurs, old DVDs and lighters. I strike up a conversation with her. She wishes to sell the goods, not to profit from it herself, but because she is at the bottom of a pecking order that The Open Heart has allowed to persist amongst the sufferers. The meagre profits she gets from selling her wares go to another sufferer. Seeing this suffering, upheld by the system of The Open Heart, I get angry. I storm into the manager’s office to tell him off. 

    In SIGNA’s universes, there is a rule we rarely see in larp: no-one ever breaks character. I first assumed there were exceptions, but there aren’t any. The rule can be upheld, because the performers have a lot of practice before stepping into character, and because safety is mapped out in advance. In fact, I asked the Köstlers if they could give one tip to the roleplaying community, based on their experiences. Their answer was to try this out. There are two parts to safely upholding this rule. Allow the characters to be fallible and take responsibility for any action you take: and have an order of command in the fiction, that allows for safe response to real-life emergencies.

    First of all, the character is seen as a whole, and should be made to withstand any emotion, action, and the like. The situation they wish to avoid, as Signa puts it, is to ”feel that the character only exists when you have everything under control”. The character should be allowed to have any response you could have, from being tired or overwhelmed, to having a headache or an upset stomach. If the character can take responsibility for those situations – that is, if it can still be the character who feels them and acts upon them – it allows for a flexibility that can ensure that the fiction is a whole, simulated world. Or, as Signa puts it:

    ”And maybe it’s also about, when working with these forms, being prepared to let go of control and let go of perfectionism.”

    Secondly, SIGNA has procedures that allow staying in fiction when an emergency strikes, for example if someone breaks a leg or the building catches fire. They have carefully planned these in advance. In any given universe, accidents like broken bones or fires can occur. Creating a chain of command that is ready to handle these kinds of problems, just as they would in real life, makes it a natural part of the story being told. If there are hospitals in the storyworld, an injured participant’s character will be taken there within the fictional world of the performance installation. If the installation is set in the front lines of a war, the performers would speak about the hospital as a lazaret. As a part of the administrative preparation, SIGNA makes sure to keep all the health insurance certificates alphabetized in a box, along with money enough for taxis and lists of relevant phone numbers, so that the character who is responsible in the fiction can access and efficiently handle the out-of-character parts required without breaking the fiction. This also extends to audience emergencies. 

    “When it happens to the audience, we have experienced that it is worse to go out of character for them. When they, for example, have an emotional breakdown or the like, it is much better to take care of them in-character. We have a room, where you can sit down with them and make them a cup of tea.”

    When someone gets aggressive, they meet them with an equal measure of calm, to de-escalate the feelings. Arthur Köstler especially promoted the concept of being prepared to nip any breakdowns in the bud – reading up on communication theories and learning about body language to see potential breakdowns coming. 

    When I heard this, it felt like a very high bar to aim for, but SIGNA noted that they do have a significant advantage to most larps. They have five weeks to practice up to the performance installation itself. When talking about it, I explained that we often do workshops before a demanding larp. Using the Sigridsdotter 2018 run in Denmark as an example, I explained the day-before workshopping for internalizing the gender-norms we were to play, as well as for introducing the storyworld and setting common boundaries for the larp. The Köstlers noted that their practice corresponds to five weeks of constant workshops, attending to all the potential need-to-knows of the performers and forming the installation together.

    The interview left me inspired to see how I could work all that I had learned into my larp praxis. With time, we will hopefully be able to find more points of connection between artforms, to explore how the borderlands and liminal spaces are formed and how we can use them to create unique, creative experiences.

    As I barge into the manager’s office, he meets me with a calm expression and tone of voice. I yell about how fucked up the system is, how unfair it is to allow the discrepancy in power to persist among the sufferers and how The Open Heart should take responsibility for the people they are claiming to help. In a slow, measured cadence, the manager answers all my worries with corporate speak. It only makes me more angry. But his tone of voice, and the cup of tea he offers me, gets the edge off and at some point I sink into the futility of trying to convince these people that they are doing anything wrong.

    Later, I talk to the sufferer who chose me and express interest in helping. He gives me his phone number. He texts me once, after the performance installation is over, but nothing comes out of it. Weeks after the final performance, I hear from another audience member, that a blonde sufferer had dropped out of the program and died from a drug overdose. I text to hear if Blondie is okay, but in the end he never responds.

    Bibliography

    Järvelä, Simo. 2019. “How real is larp?”. In Larp Design – Creating Role-Play Experiences. Edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jakko Steenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell and Elin Nilsen. Landsforeningen Bifrost.

    Ludography

    Barrett, Felix & Maxine Doyle. 2003, 2009, 2011–2024. Sleep No More. New York.

    Köstler, Signa & Arthur Köstler. 2019. Det Åbne Hjerte. Denmark. 

    Renklint, Lukas, Kaya Toft Thejls & Anna Emilie Groth. 2018. Sigridsdotter. Denmark. 


    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:

    Lyngkjær, Rasmus. 2024. “SIGNA’s Performance Installations: Walking the Liminal Border Between Larp and Theatre.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.


    Cover photo by Erich Goldmann. Photo has been cropped.

    All photos in this article are used with permission from the artistic collective SIGNA.

  • Solmukohta 2020: Is Immersive Theatre the Future of Larp?

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    Solmukohta 2020: Is Immersive Theatre the Future of Larp?

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    Thomas B. is an opinionated connoisseur of larp, dilettante larpwright, and immersive theatre debutante. While repeatedly ranting about the word “immersive”, Thomas will cover highlights of larp-ish events such as Assassin’s Creed in Napoléon’s mausoleum, costume parties in Versailles, a murder mystery in the prison cell of the Marquis de Sade, physically chasing the plot train in NYC, and larping with unprepared actors in theatre basements. Mélanie & Michael co-wrote The Lost Generation, an immersive theatre party focused on seamless narrative design. They will present a vision from the field as well as examples from their design. All attendees welcome, no prior experience necessary.

    Thomas B., Mélanie Dorey, Michael Freudenthal

    [CW] sexual assault

    Q&A from the original viewing at Solmukohta 2020 Online event

    PART 1:

    Anonymous 1:n OK, what /is/ eläytim… Something?

    Thomas B: immersion in character

     

    Anonymous 2: What’s an example of a non-immersive party?

    Michael F: Smoking outside? (Nah, that’s still peripheral participation)

     

    PART 2:

    Anonymous 3: Looks fascinating! i imagine it’s played in French?

    Melanie Dorey: Yes it’s played in French for now but we are thinking about opening an English speaking version 🙂

     

    Anonymous 4: plateauwriting I would call “devicing”

    Melanie Dorey: Oh okay thanks !

     

    Anonymous 5: I like this production process overview timeline but what happens after Showtime 😀 #experiencedesign

    Melanie Dorey: We’re not covering in so much in the talk but can talk about it after in the live chat if you are interested 😀

    Michael F: Pretty much it’s a party. People are talking about themselves, about each others views on fun things like war or artistic creation, then later yelling at each other, or supporting each other. Just a party. But Melanie will put it differently!

     

    Melanie Dorey That allowed the cast to differentiate participants and for the actors to know what interaction to do with the participants

     

    Melanie Dorey Note : all types of interaction are the same price

     

    ANON5: I wonder how this would work with my aversion to larping with NPC:s? I always experence them as being “empty” because they aren’t played by a fellow player who wants things for themselves and that they should stop wasting time on me and go play with someone who appreciates them.

     

    Thomas B: you could avoid talking to them and talk to the other guests instead

     

    Thomas B: some other attendees were basically larping, others more shy and just an

     

    Anon6: Would love the name of the book and the auther about queer games and degamification

     

    Anon7: I believe it is this one:

    Ruberg, Bonnie, and Adrienne Shaw, eds. Queer game studies. U of Minnesota Press, 2017.‏

    Michael Gyr Yes and Video-Games Have Always Been Queer!

     

    Anon8: A very mudane question to this amazing project: What did the tickets cost? Did you get support/sponsing from other sources?

     

    Melanie Dorey We don’t really cover that in the talk but can talk about it after in the live chat

     

    Melanie Dorey Very briefly : all the costs were covered by tickets

     

    Melanie Dorey And we didn’t have any support or sponsoring

     

    Michael Gyr The tickets were 55€ (early bird) to 65€ but the next production budget needed more to cover the cost and make a small margin, and got to 68€ – 78€.

     

    Hanne Grasmo Michael Gyr OK, that is not much: I paid like 290 dollars for similar experience in NYC.

     

    Michael Gyr The Paris immersive scene is just starting. Also, we would like to be as accessible as possible and it’s a bummer because the production costs a lot. Kol Ford’s talk this year was inspiring in that light.

     

    Jenny M. Nordfalk The definition of being a professional is that you get paid, I guess? maybe there should be a third group in between the actors and the audience? We went to an immersive interactive murder mystery last year and I had a lot of guests coming up to me after and thanking me along with the actors..

     

    Michael Gyr We had people mistook for actors AND actors mistook for audience. That was the intent of blurring the lines alright 🙂

     

    Anon9: Who’s your photographer? This all looks gorgeous.

     

    Melanie Dorey It’s Les Garçonnes Studio !

     

    Anon10: How many hours did the actors use for preparations? Where they paid for all of that???

     

    Melanie Dorey We had about 10 full days of workshops and rehearsals with the actors (which is not a lot), we didn’t have the budget unfortunately for the rehearsals but all the show nights were paid

     

    Anon11: What were the buzz words given to the most interactive participants, and hiow did they work?

     

    Melanie Dorey They were secret phrases about the characters personal lives (like something you would know if you were an acquaintance)

     

    Melanie Dorey Like “How was summer in the Riviera, Zelda ?”

     

    Anon12: Were they different for different players and towards different characters, was it like giving the players relationships with the actors characters?

     

    Melanie Dorey Players had different characters but each character had only one secret code

     

    Anon12: Did the actors then take extra responsibility for those players? making them part of their group?

     

    Melanie Dorey Yes those participants were part of their “crew” for the night

     

    Anon12: Perfect, how many players did every actor have in their crew? and as it only the most intersctive feathers or did all players take part in a crew?

     

    Melanie Dorey Yes it was for the most interactive feathers only (as it included more intense interactions), and each character had from 5 to 7 members of the “crew”

     

    Anon14: Was it possible for the participants to change their feather during the performance?

     

    Michael Gyr Very good one. No it was not. But if you were to talk with the cast while wearing a “I don’t want direct interaction” feather, they would adapt their behaviour towards you, and talk with you (with a little caution). Also, all feathers all looked nice (golden, black with a golden tip, red with a golden tip).

     

    Anon13: If possible would you implement that feature for a rerun or was it best as it was?

     

    Melanie Dorey I think it could be a possibility to include that feature in our out of game safe zone !

     

    Anon15: What was the number of involved people in the team overall? Light, sound, production design, actors, concierges etc. On your team and from the rented location if any

     

    Melanie Dorey We had overall a team of 15 people for the staff (production, filming, venue, bar,…)

     

    Melanie Dorey 2 people from the venue

     

    Anon12: How many actors?

     

    Melanie Dorey 7 actors, 3 musicians, 2 bartenders, 3 people from production

     

    Anon16: What major things did you change from run 1 to run 2?

     

    Melanie Dorey We changed : set design (moved furniture), lighting, acting direction (by prepping to better answers to participants and implementing yesterday’s successes and mistakes)

     

    Melanie Dorey Mostly the change of the set design was a huge improvement because it allowed participants to feel more legitimate in the space

     

    Anon16: Did you as designers had a vision for content (not only aestetics) before you started researching and designing?

     

    Melanie Dorey We wanted something that was truly interactive and felt like a legitimate party for everyone (cast AND participants) : we didn’t want to have a frontal story with pieces of interaction but really a sandbox for everyone.

     

    Melanie Dorey That determined the party format before anything else.

     

    Anon17: Thank you so much, it was super-interesting!! 2 Questions: Was there a mechanism to step interaction up or down during runtime? Did you use safe-words or tap out to signal something is too much?

     

    Michael Gyr Good question, thanks! Besides training with the actors (which was not enough, considering errors have been made), there were three levels of “human safety nets” for audience participants. All were on the production side.

    The opener was the person to go to if you needed something during the show (they wandered around and checked up with people, in character), the bar was the place you go if there was any kind of problem or behaviour to report, and there was a saf(er), more quiet place where we would check up on the audience, or bring them if needed.

     

    Anon18: What info did participants get beforehand? Did they get a 30 second rules brief at the door or a document with the ticket or website?

     

    Michael Gyr Hi! By mail they got information on what was expected of them in terms of dressing up and more importantly, a quite short and explicit “accepted behaviour”. Thomas pointed out it looked inspired by SK/KP, which it was. There we mentioned, among other things, that racist or sexist historical (or not) talk will not be accepted by audience participants, with examples.

     

    Michael Gyr The onboarding was quite thought of and showed the rules of interaction for the evening, to make the audience participant understand they can role play, talk to us, laugh with us and so on. The process could be another 30mn talk.

     

    Anon18: Did you bring them in in groups you briefed or a short one-by-one thing?

     

    Michael Gyr Haha as I said, a whole new talk. The briefing was short and simple, with a very small group (4-5 people). It was more of an in-character scene including practicalities, setting the tone and announcing the ending (like Thomas said about opening and closing the “magic circle”, the blurry boundaries of play).

     

    Thomas Be Also, importantly the emails were sent well in advance, so you had time to prep, as opposed to most other immersive experiences that really send info last minute. I’m all for last-minute reminders, but the ground rules should be laid early on, a bit how we do in larps with design documents etc.

     

    Anon18: What made you decide on theme? Location or story or something else?

    I see both negative and positive aspects of the 20’s aesthetic as it has been done (at least in Sweden) as Great Gatsby parties that seem very directed to a non-interactive crowd.

     

    Melanie Dorey A few things made us decide on the theme :

    – We always create site-specific work, and we were inspired by this particular historical location.

    – We used on purpose the 20’s aesthetic to go in the opposite direction that is generally portrayed in “Gatsby parties”, and therefore to write about : femininity, masculinity, post-war trauma, abusive relationships, closeted queerness… All these themes portrayed by the characters we chose.

    – This “twist” (in the expectations) was something we wanted for participants experience, even though we did a lot of disclaimers about themes addressed in the experience.

    – We didn’t notice any negative effects coming from the audience because the party format and the types of interaction were giving the choices to everyone of how they wanted to live the experience. So you could have a nice themed party with your friends or chose to dive in the heart of the story and influence it.

    – Globally, we thinks that the Roaring Twenties are such an interesting period to write about because it can be layered so much in writing and is reflective in many ways of the times we live today.

     

    Thomas Be Also stuff I had to cut down due to time: check out the binaural-audio-in-the-dark work of Darkfield http://www.darkfield.org/ , I attended “Play” in Edinburgh and “Flight” in Melbourne and both are super interesting. No agency, but amazing audio/installation work.

     

    Thomas Be For another “glorified treasure hunt in a cool location”, check out Inside Opéra, in Paris’ Opéra Garnier: https://www.inside-infos.fr/opera/en/index.php

     

    Thomas Be And for another immersive theatre play, this time set in a fictitious Parisian brothel with various design issues (pay to play, favouring the loud, and super uncomfortable masks) check out Close: https://www.bigdrama.fr/

     

    Thomas Be For an immersive theatre version of Hamlet, clearly inspired by Sleep No More but with Shakespearean text (in French) instead of dancing, check out out Helsingor: https://chateauhamlet.jimdofree.com/

     

    Thomas Be And thanks to Le Musée du Fake for the reminder, other things I cut out due to time: if you’re wondering about what an immersive poetry event could look like, check your local Poetry Brothel, or Le Bordel de la Poésie in Paris, by L’assaut des poètes: https://www.lassautdespoetes.com/

     

    Anon19: I like this slider. Do/did you have in France what’s sometimes called “environmental theatre”? It’s perhaps a cousin of what is now usually described as “immersive”, and started in the 1960s with a movement to consciously minimise the role between actor and audience. In the 90s “environmental theatre” also sometimes referred to theatre where you as the audience walked around the space, like shows where you go from room to room to see different scenes and put it all together.

    I’m just wondering because I suspect this slider has even more words between these ones.

    Oh heck I just realised this is a talk that should be done.

     

    Michael Gyr A talk that should be done, yes! Anna & I put together a spreadsheet to gather examples (but that can be improved)

     

    Thomas Be There’s a lot of other types of participatory thingies “proper theatre” from theatre of the oppressed to I-cant-remember, no idea how much was done in France. I know a French larper who wrote a paper about it long time ago

     

    Thomas Be the article (unpublished so far I think) by is by Saetta Des CanonsdelaButte (not part of group), a larper and proper academic, about theatre of the oppressed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Boal , we actually have one in Paris: http://www.theatredelopprime.com/


    This was part of the Solmukohta 2020 online program. https://solmukohta.eu/

  • Solmukohta 2020: Lindsay Wolgel – Larp/Theatre Crossover in NYC

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    Solmukohta 2020: Lindsay Wolgel – Larp/Theatre Crossover in NYC

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    This is a talk about the larp/theatre crossover work currently emerging in NYC, based on the projects Lindsay has been a part of in the past year as a professional actor in New York. Productions include Sinking Ship Creations’ Off-Off Broadway show The Mortality Machine, Calculations by Caroline Murphy of Incantrix Productions, OASIS Travel Agency (an immersive theatre/nightlife/alternate reality game blend with participatory elements by Silver Dream Factory) and more! Discussion includes the experience of being a hired facilitator/actor in these pieces as well as the trend of commercial “immersive experiences” in NYC.

    www.TheMortalityMachine.com

    Q&A from the original viewing at Solmukohta 2020 Online event

    Q, Anon1: My question on all participatory theater is: How much agency do you think counts as agency? I’ve only been to something like three pieces, and none of them gave me any. (Sleep No More gave me the least.)

    A, Lindsay Wolgel: So I wouldn’t consider Sleep No More participatory theatre! I would only call that Immersive theatre, but I agree, I felt the same way when I saw it!

    Anon2: I think that’s evolving in a lot of different ways – some companies like PunchDrunk have their own audience literacy, but at the same time it’s no longer the only participatory company out there

    Anon3: I would say punchdrunk is mostly interactive, while our pieces are more participative 🙂

    Anon1: Whats… the difference, Anon3?

    Lindsay Wolgel: In sleep no more, your choices don’t affect the show at all!

    Anon4: And not even all that interactive honestly, at least based on Sleep no More and the Drowned Man

    Anon5: Be Agreed, in SNM you move the camera and sometimes get easter egg, but you don’t create or influence anything

    Anon6: The Camera Anon5 is talking is about – its to my understanding what the broader fin art scene – see as interaction and interactive art

     

    Lindsay Wolgel: Reacting would be living in the given circumstances of your character – aka acting! Yes anding is more of an improv term- where you accept a piece of story someone is offering and you say okay and build on it!

    Anon9: Yeah, if I remember, reacting is where you as the actor are able to behave as though this is happening for the first time, because you are attentive to the other actors around you, and the circumstances of the play. It’s a way to get actors to get out of the habit of pre-planning all of their feelings and how they will say things, to try to be reactive in the moment even though you know what the text is. Otherwise you’re just painting by numbers.

    Yes and is more of a tool to prevent people from shutting down ideas, so instead of saying no, I don’t want to, you say yes, and I will add THIS to make it mine, too.

    Ryan Hart: Anon9 really did a good job with it.

    I don’t remember if Lindsay got into it, but when we talked for this piece, I mentioned we really go for a presentational style of acting and roleplay, as I think it’s very accessible to our audience. Which means we want people going through “as if” they were in that situation (usually with an “alibi” in the form of a character) and reacting as they would using their lifetime of experience.

    What *I* (not speaking for anyone else here) is that people have to come in and co-create. These experiences are expensive, and run pretty quick, and need to accommodate all experience levels, so I don’t want people to get in there have to make up a story or context. They still have agency in how they deal with the situation, and they still have to take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy the experience, but I don’t want someone to come in and have to do the beginning of an improv class to enjoy the experience.

    “Yes, and…” is a great technique, but there’s more to improv, and this particular technique tends to get heavy into content creation. We also lose sight of it’s purpose (again, as Anon9 pointed out) which is to get past the “no” response.

    All of this ties into the difference between a facilitator and a participant.

    Lindsay Wolgel: Ryan Hart I didn’t – I ran out of time to go into everything, so that was a piece that didn’t make it in! I love this extended response

    Ryan Hart: So, i’m going to speak for how I use the terms, and I use them very specifically. It’s not like this carries any weight

    First, I don’t use the term “player” in theatrical larp. I use the verb “to play” because a “player” can “play” a game, and an “actor” can “play” a role, but a player doesn’t really play a role and an actor doesn’t really play a game. This isn’t a statement about larp, it’s about how I, as a native English speaker, construct those sentences. “Player” implies “Game.” For a variety of reasons (focused mostly on win/lose) conditions, I don’t use the term player, I use the term “participant.” So if a person is playing in the larp, they’re a participant.

    *SOME* participants are paid to be there, and involved in the design. They’re still playing a role, but they have to bring the design to the participants on whom the experience is focused. If some is a facilitator, they’re there exclusively for other people. I hope they have a good time, and I’m obligated to treat them well, but I’m not asking them “how did you like it.” I call those individuals “facilitators.”

    From a design perspective, there’s two big things:

    1. Not all participants are facilitators, but all facilitators are participants. So things like safety, code of conduct, and character design (see below) all apply to the facilitators.
    2. Specific beats general. Certain things apply directly to facilitators that don’t apply directly to participants. So the design has to be parsed out with that in mind.

    When you have that split: a group of people who are all playing characters, and some of those people are professionals who are there to express the design to the others, the facilitator / participant terminology works very well.

    Ryan Hart: With all that said, we don’t have NPCs… because we don’t have “Non-Participants.” An NPC refers to a character, and all our character design has to be fundamentally similar… we can alter the method of delivery (a facilitator does not need the same materials as other participants) but the character played by a facilitator should be indistinguishable in interaction from other participants (this is part of our 360 design). For example, for Scapegoat, a 4 day, 120 participant larp that happened all over NYC, about 20 of those participants were facilitators, and with two exceptions, none of them changed characters.

    So we don’t have “PCs” or “NPCs” in this design, we just have “characters.” The people who play them are participants, and some facilitators.

    Anon10: It sounds like facilitator covers more or less the original intent of an NPC, i.e. a character in place to influence the experience of the non-facilitating participants, but that the updated nomenclature is more descriptive of the current situation.

    Anon11: With a non-larper audience it’s really important how you name things for the participants, too. They take what they’re called and run with it, not having that much information to build on. So it’s a big difference if you call them players/participants/audience/characters/initiates/whatever. Usually – don’t let them know what you’re calling them behind the scenes!

    Ryan Hart: Anon11 That’s exactly why we stopped using the term player.

    We also had to, after our first review, explicitly tell people “this is not an escape room.”

    Tommy Honton did a great design on TMM, and did exactly what we asked, but if I could make one change it would have been to remove the biggest “puzzle.” We were worried people wouldn’t have enough to do, and so we literally locked up elements of the narrative, and then prominently placed those locks in front of people. They always got the locks open, and generally loved the way they accessed the narrative, but it did put some people into problem solving mode.

    Q, Anon12: But Lindsay Wolgel wasn’t the 1 on 2 expereince much less taxing? In my exp the 1 on 1 mean I’m included in everything, there’s no breaks.

    Lindsay Wolgel: I couldn’t say! I’ve never done a 1 on 1 larp experience! It was hard in some ways to split my attention between the two participants but there were definitely times where they would be dealing with each other more than me. Two groups actually asked me to give them some privacy while they sussed out what to do 😅

    Ryan Hart: I think the 1 on 2 is less taxing, except if one of the 2 is a child. Then it’s my personal version of hell.

    It also depends on the phase. Something we’ve gotten really good at is onboarding in role (it’s why I want to take the smaller version of TMM to KP). It’s very hard, when you have a list of bullets in your head you have to hit, in order, with specific phrases, to manage that and a three or four way conversation. It’s much easier to onboard 1 person.

    The conflict management and resolution? Easier with multiple people, because if you get a “fish” (a person who just isn’t doing anything, just flopping around) you have other people to play off of. Plus if you get someone who gets the design, it’s really pleasureable.

    I actually instruct facilitators to avoid talking to one person for more than five minutes without a “reason.” That’s because actors love people who give them good responses, and if left to their own devices, facilitators will gravitate towards strong roleplayers and have amazing scenes. But I’m not paying for them to give amazing scenes to experienced people who can probably get there on their own… I need them to work with the entire group.

     

    Q, Anon13: Hey, thanks again for this. I watched it again with better concentration. In the title you speak of “Larp/Theatre crossovers.”

    Content-wise, these seem like 100% larps to me. Would that be correct?

    (I understand that for marketing you might says they are “Participatory Theatre” or “Immersive Theatre” or something.)

    Anon14: From what I’ve gathered, it’s rather low on roleplay component.

    Lindsay Wolgel: Yes! Calculations was written as a larp where the only thing changed when it became a commercial theatre experience was the addition of one audience member and it being set in a hotel room. The content of the larp is exactly the same! And The Mortality Machine belongs in the genre which Ryan is naming Theatre Larp! So yes, I think participatory theatre is just a naming device that can place these in the theatre world. And to me, they are so much more than immersive theatre so I would never name them immersive theatre alone.. I’d probably add more descriptives to the title!


    This was part of the Solmukohta 2020 online program. https://solmukohta.eu/