The Booger Dance workshop

Pre-performance workshop I ran with Andrew Graham back in 2011 for the film 'The Booger Dance'.

Jerwood Open Forest - Improvisational methods

What follows is a selection of clips and snippets taken from the research and development, and subsequent rehearsals for my project at Jerwood Open Forest. The first clips are from the group workshops and rehearsals I ran for my group 23 performers. Over two days we worked  through a process of character creation, initially devised in Sherwood Forest. Beginning with a series of blindfolded trust exercises in a studio, and blind animal character creation workshops, we ventured out and spent the day in Epping Forest. Over a rainy day, we used a workshop of mine called 'Sanctuaries' to divine new meaning, and stories from the surrounding forest to be relayed in the gallery shortly after.

As I mentioned, this was preceded by R&D time in Sherwood Pine Forest, and Blakeley Lane Eco campsite where 9 of us lived for 8 days.
This first clips is from a game I created called 'ONE FOR ALL, AND ALL FOR ONE!', which facilitates improvisational story telling, loosening of bodies and tongues and makes use of a fader technique, in which the story tellers position and facing within the area determines the rules for the improvisors to try and follow.

Here's the rules, feel free to use and add to it.

This next clips is from the 'Blind Animals' game. I discovered this game in a Lithuanian Pine Forest which was home to the worlds only Larpwriter Summer School. A total legend, aka, Kristoffer Thuroe ran it and I was instantly hooked. It's sometimes used by a group of Nordic Larpers as one of many pre-larp workshops. Its is one of the many methods to build trust between players, create shared fictions and flesh out various character traits through blindfold/eyes closed improvisation.
The accompanying sound, is taken from another game of mine called 'Sanctuaries'. All of this material was generated as part of my Jerwood Open Forest research and development period. The results of which were used in a series of performances in the Jerwood Gallery, London - 2014.

Pre-larp workshops

You'd have to have either been (a) living under a rock, or (b) actually have a life outside of my sphere of existence, not to have heard me banging out about Nordic Larp over the last 18 months. In short, its amazing and it's added so much to my practice of late, it's quite hard to know where to start?
I think it's fair to say the lifeblood of Nordic Larp, and the key distinction between it and 'boffer' larps, are the use of Pre-Larp workshops. Upon discovery of which, I felt like Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This community has got immersion, participation, alibi and sensitivity to players down to an extremely refined, streamlined system which I have been poaching from to my hearts content.

Knutpunkt is an annual Nordic Larp convention which takes place in one of a few rotating Scandinavian countries. It's where my adventure all began, and is bar none the highest caliber of Nordic Larp gathering in the world, academics, games players, writers you name it. It's here. This is where the edge gets sharpened every year, and I count myself as extremely proud to have run my Larp 'I know you are but what am I?' here in 2014. If you wanna know more visit their excellent site www.http://knutpunkt.org, and then join us and the growing British contingent for Knutpunkt 2015 in Denmark.

I used many of these newly acquired pre-larp workshops in the methodology behind my recent Jerwood Open Forest show. They were extremely useful in devising new languages, rituals, cultures and characters, all of which we did whilst living in Sherwood Forest for 8 days.

Recently I've been trying to cultivate a Nordic Larp scene here in London. As of yet, the UK Larp scene is more dedicated to 'boffer' larps and 'freeform' games. the Nordic scene is almost non-existent, so bit by but, larp by larp I'm doing my bit to change this. The first step down the Nordic Path to glory being an event I ran at Artsadmin called 'Playing to Lose'. This went down brilliantly and introduced a good sized group to new forms of Larping.

https://www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/3458

The workshop Handbook is about as a good place as any to start if your interested in finding out more.

You should also definitely visit the following sites, these people (demigods) are where its at with Nordic Larp. So much excellent information and near limitless resources for Larpers, artists, performers, teachers and academics.

http://norper.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/nordic-larp-primer/
http://lizziestark.com/
http://petterkarlsson.se/
http://www.munthe-kaas.dk/
http://www.alibisforinteraction.se/blog/
https://www.youtube.com/user/nordiclarptalks

Once you've been there, I suggest you pick up or download 'Larp's from the Factory'. A staggeringly great collection of Nordic Larp's each playable between 2-6 hrs with relatively straightforward playability for the complete Larp newb. I'm currently working my way through 6 of them at The Proud Archivist in London, swing by if you in town.

Grid walks

Live posters

A collection of some of the best Live Posters made over the last six years. Each of these was made over a day by groups of Fine Art and Fashion students from Epsom, Kingston and Stoke on Trent Universities.
The images are taken from a mix of B-Movie, Eastern European and Ghanaian film posters. Each make-shift tableaux is constructed using a mix of of wigs, charity shop clothes, cardboard, tape and poster paint.