• Can 2016 be the year we make a breakthrough on the subject of how to deal with audience at chamberlarps?

By Martin Nielsen

When attending contemporary theatre performances the past year, I have been following closely what happens when the actors try to involve the audience in doing something. Even though the audience at these kind of performances should not be alien to some kind of interactivity, the bar seems to be extremely high for people to take part. One example I remember well is when Lisa Lie addressed the audience and invited them to «tap three times» in Blue Motel (Blackbox Theatre, Oslo, 2015). Not a single spectator responded until she had repeated the request three times, with increasing intensity – and frustration. At last, one spectator simply tapped the floor three times with their shoe, and the show could go on.

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(An adaptation of the Keynote given by Ane Marie Anderson at Knudepunkt, Denmark, 2015)

 

When we play larps, we create fictional universes where we stimulate ourselves – psychologically and physically – and we try to make the experiences we have within these universes feel real. To do this, we take on characters, and we use our bodies to convey our characters to our fellow players and to ourselves.

 

Taking on a character in a larp is a very conscious act, and through the history of larp we have developed and borrowed many techniques that we can consciously use to try to make our fictional realities more real to ourselves. But when we make the conscious decision to enter a larp, we bring our bodies with us, and our bodies are adapted to life. Even though we try hard, most of our physical selves don’t change when we larp, and we always carry subconscious and physical aspects of our real selves with us.

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The genre of chamberlarps, in the meaning of larps playable in 1-2 rooms, have changed dramaticly during the past five years. In this blogpost, based on my key note at the Knudepunkt conference, I will try go give an historical overview of what has changes, what this means and a few predictions for the future. I have included a few examples from before 2010, larps that I believe have been influential to late design. However, the main focus in this article is on what has happened the last five years.

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By Martin Nielsen

With a few exceptions, all larps take place in a set culture. This can be either a fictional culture or a culture based on the real world. For the previous larps where I have been part of the organizer team, we have made an effort to define the culture together with the players through a pre-larp workshop. This includes facilitating that the players calibrate their understanding of the culture. Earlier this month, I facilitated a workshop on this subject based on the larps Tinget (2011), Till Death Do Us Part (2012) and Huntsville (2013) at the Swedish larp conference Prolog. This blogpost is based on that workshop.

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