DESCRIPTION

This LARP was extremely reduced in its design, in fact it consisted only of one sentence to start with. Recommended safety rules were provided, as well as the concept of Glasl’s conflict/escalation cascade (Glasl, 1994).

The players themselves had to make up the roles and construct a plot around this one sentence. Although this sounds like the design of an improvisation theater, the review process afterwards showed otherwise.

The participants found during this experiment 2 important distinctions between LARP and impro-theater.

In a LARP, you play for yourself and not for an audience. Further, in LARP there is a much bigger focus on internal emotions and experiences, as opposed to improtheater, where “crowdpleasing” is the main point.

With this experimental LARP we have thus proven that LARP is a distinct, unique artform and not some lay-off of  any other art.