EDU-Larping: Are You Like, Ok?
My first EDU-Larp experience, what it is, and how it went!
Today I participated in my first ever EDU-larp.
For those unaware, an EDU-larp is a form of Live Action Role Playing (LARPing). LARPing is a performance in which a group of people are given characters to play and a set of rules to follow. The amount of information for each person receives is dictated by the rule sheet.
The EDU part of the Edu-larp means that the scenarios and rules are designed in such a way in order to teach the group/observers something.
Once you’ve been given your ruleset, and characters it is up to the “actors” to play out the scene in a way that feels right. It compares very strongly to improv, but with a stronger narrative base for you to start with.
Somewhere between the spectrum of Improv ←> and Dungeons and Dragons.
The particular scenario we took part in today was called “Are You Like, Ok?” by Carly Kocurek.
It should be noted that not all participants in our group identify as women. So when I say she/her I am referring to the characters and not the actors.
For example I am a male, I use they/them pronouns. But my character in the scene is a woman, and I would refer to myself as a woman.
The rulebook for this larp does a great job of setting the scene. This larp is designed around the central idea of a bunch of women in 2004 meeting in a bathroom before a music concert. The book totally conveys that vibe with its notebook style artwork, and paper cutout text blocks.
One of the women has the role of “Sad Girl” who has an issue that the group has to work together to solve.
The sad girl is free to decide what her central conflict will be, and it fittingly will set the tone for the whole rest of the role play. The sad girl in our group decided that the conflict should be “My boyfriend wanted a hot dog, and I dropped the last one on my way to give it to him.” This immediately gave the performance a comedic slant that I think everyone in the group was more than happy to lean into.
There were some rules in the book about how our group should interact, but our group seemed to be built of people with improv and theatre experience. This of course meant most of the rules of the game were tossed to the wayside as soon as the scene started.
This also seemed to be informed by the massive amounts of detail each actor had to hold in their heads before the scene started. It made it difficult for the actors to add their own information into the scene.
Information like this tidbit for my character:
While fun in concept during my playthrough the person playing the character “J” was reluctant to add characters to their backstory which meant that I had nothing to play off of.
The adeptness of each of the other characters in the group also played a big role in moving the story along. The sheer amount of detail each person was keeping in their head meant that many of the group members were too afraid to add more detail to an already bloated scene.
Participating in any larp/performance activity is very challenging and upon reflection I can see why the rulebook had everyone sit in a circle and take turns chatting.
Since our group leaned into the more naturalistic/improv approach this meant that the only people participating in the scene were the ones with more experience in that space. People who were quick on their feet, comfortable with “yes-and”ing, and not afriad to add new detail to the scene. Unfortunately this meant that the others stood and watched for the whole scene.
Perhaps that’s not the worst thing, but I have no doubt that if we performed the same thing again with new roles the people talking would still be those with more confidence in the group. Our improv-like setup ended up making the game less inclusive unintentionally.
Our scene went like this:
The sad girl enters the bathroom crying. A couple of us started already in the bathroom, while others enter afterwards. The profuse crying from the sad girl attracts the attention of the other women in the bathroom. They ask her what’s wrong, and she tells them her backstory. The women in the bathroom lament over her issue and console her, and judge boyfriend for being so childish. I come out recognize a couple of the other people there and butt into the narrative. I have a rumor I’m trying to scope out, and I think that Sad Girl might know the answer to my question. In exchange for our conversation I offer a solution. She unfortunately doesn’t know the answer as to whether or not the rumor is true, dang. But I do owe her a solution so I say I know a hotdog vendor outside the venue that can get her an extra hot-dog. I agree to go get it with another lady who is a freelance writer. Once we make it back into the bathroom to deliver the hotdog I trip, dropping the hotdog on the floor. This effectively ends the scene, but since this is a larp we kept going. It ended with the group of women decided to murder the hotdog salesman outside for scalping them on hot dogs.
The debrief after the performance was almost more fun than the actual larp itself. Getting to hear each persons perspective on what was happening, and their goals throughout the performance. We concluded that our scene was definitely the silliest of the performances in class.
In conclusion this larp was very fun. The freedom we took for ourselves definitely made the experience our own. It definitely reminded me of how much I enjoy improvisation. But I feel like perhaps we were given too much information to hold onto. Also our aversion to the rules of the scenario itself created some social imbalances based on the individual experience of each actor performing their roles.