Martin Nielsen: The Chamberlarp Revolution

Baader-Meinhof Experiment at Riksteatern. Ingame. Photo: Gabriel Widing.

Baader-Meinhof Experiment at Riksteatern 2010 during A Week in Stockholm. Ingame. Photo: Gabriel Widing.

Martin Nielsen held a keynote entitled The Chamberlarp Revolution at Knudepunkt 2015 from which he now has released the text. Martin talks about the history and future about formats for short larps such as chamber larp or black box larp.

What does all this mean for the future? I have four predictions and two wishes for the future:

1. We will continue to make larps even more accessible, by integrating workshop techniques in the design in a way that will help more people overcome the anxiety of participating

2. We will make even shorter formats to permit more people to play. Just like short key notes or formats like pecha kucha are gaining popularity on the expense of long talks, we will find even shorter larp formats. Tabletop roleplayers have «roleplaying poems» that can be played in 15 minutes. I don’t know how, but I’m sure we will also have an eqvivialent in larp.

3. Manuscripts will be attributed to author rights, that will provide royalities, which will make one more stepping stone in making it possible to live professionally from larps

4. And larps will start adapting other larps. In his Nordic Larp talk, Evan Torner spoke about adaption litterature or films into, but we will also see, just as in the theatre, that reruns will use LARP manuscripts but use their own adaptions, such as changing the setting but keeping the story.

I strongly recommend the read. And while waiting for the video of the talk to be released, head over to Alibier!

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