Sarabande

By Jeppe Bergmann Hamming and Maria Bergmann Hamming

Players: 12

Genre: Nordic

**Sarabande** is a scenario originally created for Fastaval 2013. It has been run in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England, France, Texas (and soon Lithuania).

It is an expressionistic Larp
 focusing on the use of repetition, non-linear time and the use of art
as communication. It is set in a French café on Montmartre at the end of
 the 19th century where twelve persons meet every day– all entangled in
issues of love, beauty, freedom and truth. Day after day they live out
these issues through their art, trying desperately to break free or to
find that one true love.

The scenario uses special repeated scenes with choreographed
movement, restrictions on the use of spoken language for communication,
props and the use of sound and music for shifting between scenes.

The game begins with a workshop session, where the participants
construct their characters, conflicts and relations on top of a
pre-generated stereotype through the use of a mixture of collaborative
idea generating sessions, symbolic props and the use of movement and
music. The amount of prewritten material is very limited, since the
scenario is generated and played out through the use of the
participants’ bodies rather than their heads.

Through the workshops the participants will develop their
characters’ routine, a choreographed set of movements to a central piece
 of music. They will repeat this routine again and again during the
workshop evolving it and integrating it with the other participants’
routines, so that in the end they all know their routine by heart. At
the same time the routines are so heavily integrated, that any change in
 a routine will cascade through all the participants’ routines, causing
changes for all the characters. Since the routine is used for cutting
between each scene and marking the shift to a new day, it is used to in
the beginning mark the similarity of each day at the cafe, but as the
scenario unfolds, the participants will choose to alter their routine to
 mark a decision made by them, and this decision will cause other
characters to experience a change in their routine, which will perhaps
cause changes for their character.
In this way the routine is a physical expression on how the characters
are tied together and how our decisions affect others.

The workshop will also provide the participants with means to
perform the actual scenes of the scenario. Since Montmartre is a place
of truth and beauty, and since the scenario is set in s surreal version
of Montmartre, nobody in the café has boring ordinary discussions or
talks. Instead the scenes are played with what we call dramatic
expression. This is the use of monologues, dancing, singing, painting,
writing, reciting, playing or any other means of communication, which
has an artistic dimension. In this way all conflicts and interaction
becomes something worthwhile for all participants to watch, and since
the characters and conflicts have been generated in collaboration
between the players, it will be clear for all players what the other
characters are actually expressing. And a main theme of the scenario is
to have the drama and conflict played out in the open for everyone to
see instead of it happening inside of the participants’ heads.

Since the play is continuous the participants will have no chance
 to talk about how much time transpires between each scene, but will
just have to play along with whatever the other participants decide to
put into play. The conductors of the scenario only instruct during the
workshop, when the play is started they only control the music and when
to cut.
It is up to the participants whether they would like to jump forward in
time, or perhaps repeat the same day again and again. And sometimes some
 participants will play as if several weeks pass between each scene
while others in the same room are experiencing the same day again and
again. This is in no way a problem but just ads to the intended artistic
 feel of the larp.

The game is mainly influenced by operas like La Traviata and La
Bohème, and like opera it is not centered around the plot since it is
taken for granted that everybody knows up front what the plot is, but
instead focuses on the expression and the way that the plot is told. In
contrast to typical larps which are more focused on unfolding a story
and perhaps surprising the participants with plot twists.
From the larping scene it has taken inspiration from Vrøvl and Déjà vu and was written for Fastaval, where it won the Otto for Best Participant Experience and was nominated for the Jurys' Special Prize. Before Fastaval it was playtested on Vintersol and has afterwards been run at Grenselandet, Stockholm Scenariofestival, Playing to Loose in London and in the US by Sarah Lynne Bowman. It is currently on the program for Metamorphoses in Lithuania and Black Box Horsens in Denmark.

Previous NZ runs

Christchurch 2016

Auckland 2015