Wizards, humans, magical animals, and faeries attend a mundane community’s summer solstice festival. Magic is in the air, voices are stilled, and dreams can come true at a cost. Tonight a journey between realms will grant attendees terrifying mystical power to pursue their desires. How far will you go to get what you want? When you are all-powerful, what is actually important to you?

What

Glamourous Night is a larp about faerie magic and wizards’ hubris for 15 to 25 players. It is an abstract and musical experience exploring the themes of mind control and healing from trauma. This event is a playtest for a larp designed by Jon Cole.

In Glamourous Night, players use two movement techniques to perform ensorcelling magic as their characters. Characters will experience joyful exploration and tempting darkness as they share, subjugate, and are subjugated.

When

Saturday January 11th, 2019, from 1 to 6 pm

Background

This is one of the final playtests of Glamourous Night, a nearly finished  larp that should deliver a fairly polished experience.  The organizer would like to gather your feedback after play for about 30 minutes.

Details on the larp

Setting and Situation

This larp is set in a medieval European world where magic and myth is reality. On the summer solstice a mundane community holds their annual celebration. This year, a mysterious covenant of wizards invited the community invited the villagers to celebrate in a mystically significant river valley. Elders say that the valley has strange auras that shift between magical and faerie. This solstice, human emotion and excitement have drawn faeries through the ancient mists, seeking playmates and playthings.

Play Style

Glamourous Night represents magical interactions with two movement techniques, so that magic in this world is a full body experience. Instead of a flick of wand and saying a Latin word, magic in this larp involves improvising body movement under specific constraints. The two techniques are simple to learn and the ‘rules’ of how to move make it easy to use and improvise spells. The workshop will be about 2 hours.

This game uses music to inspire the story and there will be a soundtrack for each scene and act of the game. Movement is the most important way to communicate in this larp. Characters can talk to one another but they cannot resolve their conflict by speech alone. Play will be about 2 hours.

You might like this larp if:

• You want to play with temptation, power, and revenge.
• You like having unique, unusual experiences that you can tell your friends about later.
• You have personal interest in fairy tales, rituals, mind control, or the power of music.
• You are interested in the games White Death, Ribbon Drive, Sarabande, My Jam, Before and After Silence.
• You enjoy other activities that have “rules” for improvised movement such as contact improv, interplay, or blues dancing.
• You are a fan of Ars Magica, the setting for this larp.

Where

Gandhi Mahal restaurant

3009 27th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55406

Paid street parking nearby, or free if you’re willing to walk a couple of blocks.

Metro Transit Blue Line, 7, & 21 stops nearby.

Tickets

Get a ticket by filling out the Glamourous Night registration form. Unlike some of our other events, these tickets are first come first served. Once you have a ticket you don’t need to do anything else besides show up to play!

On the day of the event we request a pay-what-you-want goodwill cash donation ($5-$10 suggested) to pay for our use of the space. No one will be turned away if they do not make a donation.

Details about Movement Techniques

Ars Rego

The Art of Direction is a technique created by Maria and Jeppe Bergmann Hamming for the larp Spellbound. This movement technique represents a seductive domination of will. The technique has been thoroughly playtested with regards to consent, and Spellbound was the toast of the European festival circuit in 2018.

The technique involves one player consensually marking another with a visible marker like a ribbon and then directing their movements through hand to hand contact. Its advanced forms include adding more followers and leading movement from afar with hand gestures. It allows players to roleplay losing control to dark, sexy magic in a way that feels very safe.

Ars Canto

The Art of Enchantment is a counterpart to Ars Rego, purpose built for this larp. It is intended to represent mutual spellcasting, performing arcane experiments with a willing participant, and other egalitarian magical interactions.

The technique involves two players using a point of contact to share weight between them. Participants play with moving the point at which they make contact between their hands, arms, and upper back. With a few minutes of practice people can use this technique to express their character’s mindset, react to their partner’s emotion, or interact with multiple people at the same time. Alpha playtesters said they wanted to play the technique again and that sharing contact feels like a playful, mutual exploration.

Other Information

Differences from September Playtest

For those of you who playtested Glamourous Night earlier this year, the author has modified Ars Canto significantly, changed talking rules, completely re-done the scenes and soundtrack. The workshop is shorter and about half of it is totally new exercises. The larp is still about the same things, and now it’s a leaner, more efficient production. Because you have so much control in play, you can easily ensure that you’ll have a completely different experience playing for a second time.

Accessibility

Our venue is on the ground floor and climate-controlled. We don’t know if it’s fully ADA compliant, but from an in-person inspection we think it’s wheelchair accessible. Our playspace has plenty of seating. It shares exactly one locking single stall restroom with the attached attached restaurant.

The movement techniques were originally developed for temporarily able people with people who have moderate stamina and flexibility. Do not hesitate to reach out, we are willing to work with you to make accommodations, limited by our budget or budget of time and financial resources.

Content Advisory

The story of this larp guides the characters to explore how being traumatized in their backstory affects them now, and move towards healing that hurt. The method for this is a journey between worlds and the confrontational nature of mind control magic.

A key element of play is magical mind control, which is portrayed via a meta-technique that emphasizes player consent. Still, characters will be temporarily controlled by others before the tables are turned. Sexual violence is a banned theme for this larp, instead characters use mind control as an unhealthy coping method and attempt to gain control of an out of control situation.

This is a highly physical larp where the majority of play is done via non-verbal movement techniques. Bring your water bottle because you can expect to sweat! All techniques will be taught in a workshop and no prior skills are needed to play.

Costumes

Do wear clothing that is comfortable to move in for long periods of time. If you really like costuming, you are welcome to bring costume accessories to share with others, but truly no costuming is needed. The most important thing is wearing stuff you can move in and don’t mind getting sweaty. If you want to join us for dinner, you may want to bring something you’re comfortable wearing at a slightly fancy sit down restaurant. They don’t have a dress code or anything but it’s the kind of place with cloth napkins and $15-20 entrees.

Social

Since we’re already going to be in an Indian restaurant with delicious food, after game some folks will get food together. Because it’s a popular sit down place on a Saturday night we’ll be making a reservation. Indicate whether or not you’d like to join us on your sign up form so we know how many seats to reserve. Folks who didn’t attend the larp are welcome to attend this part, so long as they fill out the sign up form too.

Contact

Contact us with any questions or concerns!

Image credits: Johannes Plenio (CC BY 4.0) and Larp House