The larping|The Immersion Larp Festival takes place in Tehdas Teatter at the beginning of August.
From what feel alive to the experiences of a person suffering from an autoimmune disease? How about jumping into the middle of the bombing of Hiroshima or teenage girls’ pajama party?
In August, at Turku Tehdas Teatter, you can immerse yourself in the above-mentioned and several other situations in the first-ever Immersion Larp Festival in the event.
Flapping, that is, playing a liverole, typically requires a lot of preparation, says the event’s artistic producer Kaisa Kangas. Costumes, character development, background materials are needed.
Instead, you can jump into Immersion’s larps from the cold, and the dress code is neutral. The so-called black box larps organized in a theater setting are also shorter in duration than most of their kind.
According to Kanka, the larps experienced in Turku are theatrically experimental and abstract. A lot of elements that can be connected to larps have been eliminated, but in their place are creatively used sound and light technology.
Some of Immersion’s larps do not use words at all. Then the participants have to read each other’s gestures and physical presence.
“For example, a visual artist Hilma af Klintin in a larp about life and erotic tensions between women, you can only touch the other person’s hands and arms, and withdrawal must be absolutely respected,” says Kangas.
Some the larps of the event sound quite raffley: Seaside Prison –the dystopian scenario of the larp is compared in the software information to the situation in Gaza, while In Sexcraft dubbed Japanese porn animation.
According to Kaisa Kanka, in more serious larps, the safety rules are reviewed with the participants in a preparatory workshop.
“The workshops also agree on how to communicate outside the game that something doesn’t feel right.”
In the end, you can stay at the theater to process your feelings with the other larpar people.
Kangas is aware that larps can be harsh in content.
“Larpau is its own art form. That’s why I believe that difficult subjects can be dealt with in larps just like in the theater,” he says.
Immersion Larp Festival at Tehdas Teatteri in Turku, August 2–3.
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