Immersion on elokuussa järjestettävä kansainvälinen festivaali, jonka ohjelmisto koostuu teatteritekniikoita hyödyntävistä 4-5 tunnin pituisista black box -larpeista. Ohjelmistossa on uusia, ennennäkemättömiä teoksia Suomesta ja ulkomailta sekä tunnettuja, kansainvälisesti maineikkaita larppeja. Painopiste on yhteiskunnallisissa ja taiteellisissa larpeissa.
Larppi on improvisoitua draamaa, jossa ei ole yleisöä tai käsikirjoitusta. Teosta ei seurata passiivisesti vaan se koetaan hahmoissa toimien ja eläytyen. Jokainen osallistuja antaa oman panoksensa teoksen kokonaisuuteen. Kyse ei ole näyttelemisestä, vaan larppi on kokemisen taidetta.
Festivaalilippu sisältää kolme larppia. Osallistuminen ei vaadi ennakkovalmistautumista tai aiempaa kokemusta larpeista – ainoastaan uteliasta ja avointa mieltä! Tapahtuma on englanninkielinen.
In English
Immersion is an international larp festival that features short black box larps. Black box larps are larps that use theater equipment like sound and light etc. The programme consists of both brand new larps fresh from the oven as well as well known larps from Finland and abroad. The focus is on social and artistic larps.
Larp is improvised drama with no audience or lines. You can’t experience a larp by watching passively, instead it is done through action and immersion. Every participant adds their own part to the whole of the art piece. Larp is not acting – larp is the art of experience.
The festival ticket includes up to three 4-5 hour larps. Participation does not require any preparation beforehand. You don’t need previous larp experience to attend, only curiosity and an open mind! The language of the event is English.
Immersion is supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Tehdas Teatteri
Programme
Friday, 17-21
Group
inside:outside
Only Moment Left
Perfect Human
Sexcraft
Seaside Prison (Note! Lasts until 22)
Saturday, 11-15
6th of August, part I: Sky
A Cancelled Ice Sculpturing Contest is Not a Northern Light
Cherry, Dust, Chair!
Devil in the Details
End(less) Story
Sacrifice
Superrealism
Saturday, 17-21
6th of August, part II: Earth
Inner Domain
A Film Noir Murder Mystery
Lupus
Monet and the Moment
The One That Got Away
Descriptions of the larps
6th of August, part I: Sky
Designers: Aino H
Designers and larprunners present: Aino H
Number of participants: 10
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: war, death, mass destruction
It is 6th of August in 1945, and the world is never going to be the same again. 6th of August is a two-part larp that explores the atomic bombing of Hiroshima from two viewpoints. Part I: Sky focuses on a bomber crew on its way to the target. The flying weather is good, and there are two hours to the destination. Time passes slowly, there is plenty of time for chit-chat and crosswords. The Japanese air defence is no longer a problem.
Other things to note: This is the first part of a two-part larp 6th of August. Participants are expected to take part also in part II: Earth where they take the roles of ordinary people living in Hiroshima.
6th of August, part II: Earth
Designers: Aino H
Designers and larprunners present: Aino H
Number of participants: 10
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: war, death, mass destruction
It is 6th of August in 1945, and the world is never going to be the same again. 6th of August is a two-part larp that explores the atomic bombing of Hiroshima from two viewpoints. Part II: Earth focuses on people on the ground who are living their last morning. No one knows what is going to happen. People are waking up to a normal morning. Someone is leaving for work, another for the marketplace to see if there is rice for sale somewhere or at least something for a dinner. They make plans for today, for the next week, next month.
Other things to note: This is the second part of a two-part larp 6th of August. Participants are expected to take part also in part I: Sky where they take the roles of a bombing crew.
A Cancelled Ice Skulputring Contest Is Not a Northen Light
Designers: Patrik Balint
Designers and larprunners present: Patrick Balint
Number of participants: 4-6
Duration: 2-3 hours
Content info: homophobia, broken home, hunting animals, child neglect (in the background story)
A young woman sold everything to live her dream. She is on her way to
northern Sweden where there is supposed to be an ice sculpture competition during a festival. In the hotel, the leader of the local community is having lunch. He didn’t get funding for the festival, so it will not be. A boy finally found the strength to leave his broken home. He is wandering down a cold road in the countryside with an elephant as his only companion. In a cabin in the woods, a family has gathered for the yearly hunt.
Most of them don’t want to be there at all. Two people are driving in a car at 190 km/h. There is a ghost in the back seat and the radio is playing rock music.
Cherry! Dust! Chair!
Designers: Frida Sofie Jansen
Designers and larprunners present: Frida Sofie Jansen
Number of participants: 5-20
Duration: 3 hours
Content info: breaking balloons can create a loud noice
Imagine a land where people hardly ever speak, this is the land of the
word factory. What do you do when you want to express your feelings,> but the only words you have are “escalator” and “bubblegum”?
The larp is based on the children’s book Phileas’s Fortune: A Story about Self-Expression by Agnés de Lestrade. In the world of
the larp, you will have to buy every word that you ever say, and good
words are expensive. Every now and then, the wind carries words from
the great pipes of the word factory, and you can catch them in the
wind.
This is an experience where you hardly speak at all.
Inner Domain
Designers: Vili von Nissinen and Nina Mutik
Designers and larprunners present: Vili von Nissinen and Nina Mutik
Number of participants: 6-12
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: same sex desire, lesbians, jealousy, romance,
spirituality, rituals, physical touch on hands and arms, drawing on
the floor
Inner Domain explores sexuality between women through the esoteric.
It draws inspiration from the life of Swedish visual artist Hilma af
Klint (1862-1944) and the different all-female groups she was part of.
In these groups, women held seances, practiced theosophy, and found
special connections between each other at the beginning of the 20th
century. The group of women, many of whom were artists, created a safe
space to break society’s norms on gender, sexuality, and romance
through spiritual practices.
Participants need to be comfortable with touching hands and arms of
other people with an erotic tone and being and moving on the floor
drawing together with others. All bodies, genders, and sexualities are
welcome to explore erotic lesbian tension.
Devil in the Details
Designers: Hazel Anneke Dixon and Usva Inei
Designers and larprunners present: Hazel Anneke Dixon and Usva Inei
Number of participants: 6-10
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: art making, demons
A family has come together to perform a ritual that has made their wildest
dreams come true. They now face the consequences of their actions as well as the demons that now control their fate. Inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray,
Devil in the Details explores morality, relationships and dark secrets. The participants will use art materials to edit pictures of their characters.
End(less) Story
Designers: Nina Runa Essendrop
Designers and larprunners present: Nina Runa Essendrop
Number of participants: 7-15
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: end of the world, death, the larp will contain interaction and
communication through physical touch but participants can take it at their own pace.
End(less) Story is an abstract, poetic larp taking place in the eternal seconds
right after the world has ended. Together, the participants tell a fragmented story by interpreting physical sensations and shadow images. It is an exploration of the moments that make up our experience of life and of the way we consciously construct our sense of reality together.
A Film Noir Murder Mystery
Designers: Freja Gyldenstrøm
Designers and larprunners present: Freja Gyldenstrøm
Number of participants: 6-10
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: alcohol, murder, domestic violence, sex, sexism (violence is played out in theatre style, and sex scenes are represented with saxophone music and moaning).
A classic film noir story featuring old Hollywood archetypes. A murder has
been committed and a dame is in distress. But who is really behind the crime in this grim tale where it seems everyone has a motif of their own?
Group
Designers: Bart Price
Designers and larprunners present: Bart Price
Number of participants: 4-15
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: mental health issues
A new therapy group meets for the first time. Attendants are different people with different personal struggles but they share a common desire to work through their problems together. The group is led by an innovative holistic-therapy facilitator who utilises the power of role-play and performance.
inside:outside
Designers: Eirik Fatland and Mike Pohjola
Number of participants: 10-20
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: violence, oppression, prison
A bunch of strangers wake up in a white cube, not knowing how or why. They are all prisoners, wearing white, numbered overalls. A voice calls them by numbers, one at a time, to the next room. In the other another voice accuses them of unspecified crimes, holds philosophical monologues, and forces them to confront ethical dilemmas. Then the prisoner is returned with the others. At random times, or if the prisoners are difficult, guards enter the cell and beat up the prisoners.
This Nordic larp classic explores game theoretic ideas of The Prisoner’s Dilemma and Wolf’s Dilemma. It has been influenced by writings of Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as the films A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Cube (1997).”
Lupus
Designers: Katri Lassila and Antti Kanner
Designers and larprunners present: Katri Lassila and Antti Kanner
Number of participants: 1-20
Duration: 2 hours
Content info: illness, psychological stress, difficult diagnostic process, the illness is portrayed as a supernatural entity with a potentially frightening appearance
Lupus is focused on the experience of the autoimmune disease SLE and its
physical and psychological consequences. The larp operates on a fantastical level where the illness is transformed into a supernatural entity with its own will. The purpose of Lupus is to challenge participants to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as coping with challenges. It is based on real experiences, gathered from patients with SLE.
Mates, Dates and Sleepovers
Designers: Lele Kauppila
Designers and larprunners present: Lele Kauppila
Number of participants: 3-5
Duration: 3-4 hours
Content info: portraying 14-year-old girls, sitting on the floor
“Soooo, if you had to kiss anyone in our school, who would it be?” Mates,
Dates, and Sleepovers is a teenage drama where a group of teenage girls play spin the bottle at a sleepover. It is time to talk about school, hobbies, and – of course! – cute boys.
The larp is loosely based on Cathy Hopkins’s Mates, Dates book series.
Monet and the Moment
Designers: Ann Kristine Eriksen and Danny Wilson
Designers and larprunners present: Ann Kristine Eriksen and Danny Wilson
Number of participants: 12-20
Duration: 3-4 hours
Content info: death of loved ones, physical decay, mild physical touch
A sensory journey through Monet’s memories and his mad hunt for the
fleeting moment. A manifestation of the elusive impressions of the impressionist, as real as a passionate romance and as cold as death on a winter morning.
The One That Got Away
Designers: Jamie MacDonald
Designers and larprunners present: Jamie MacDonald
Number of participants: 3-20
Duration: 1 hour
Content info: family, death
A father and his adult son in a fishing boat. The only things on their minds –
apart from the fish – are the things they cannot bring themselves to say to each other. But someday there will no longer be a chance to say what seems impossible to say now.
Only Moment Left
Designers: Pihla Lehtinen
Designers and larprunners present: Pihla Lehtinen
Number of participants: 3-9
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: death of a loved one
A ghost story about love, loss and things left unsaid. This queer feminist
chamber larp explores poetic as a play style.
The Perfect Human
Designers: Juhana Pettersson and Jaakko Stenros
Designers and larprunners present: Juhana Pettersson and Jaakko Stenros
Number of participants: 6-10
Duration: 4-5 hours
Content info: maintaining a positive attitude
The perfect smiles, the bland but supportive body language, the arrows
trending ever upwards… What would it be like to work in the world of flawless stock photo people? In The Perfect Human, you can join the positive, happy and productive workforce of Creative Solutions and find out!
Sacrifice
Designers: Nadja Lipsyc and Nicola van Straaten
Designers and larprunners present: Nadja Lipsyc and Nicola van Straaten
Number of participants: 7
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: expressive movements, change of light and sound, fast-paced activity
People of a land enter into a pact with a mysterious entity in exchange for
the concretization of their dreams. The entity offers them a city, but will return to ask for a sacrifice. The larp explores our relationship to land, to cities and to desire through the notion of sacrifice, or what needs to be given up.
Seaside Prison
Designers: Kaisa Kangas, Martin Nielsen, Mohamad Rabah, Essi Santala, Hannu Sinervä
and Joona Pettersson
Designers and larprunners present: Kaisa Kangas, Syksy Räsänen, and a sound/light technician
Number of participants: 8-16
Duration: 5 hours
Content info: war, bombing, death of family member
Step in an alternative reality where Finland is under occupation and the
situation on Åland Islands resembles that of real-world Gaza. Two ordinary families live as neighbours in Marienhamn. Their family drama and wedding preparations are interrupted by bombings in which some of the family members are killed.
Sexcraft
Designers: Frida Sofie Jansen and Tor Kjetil Edland
Designers and larprunners present: Frida Sofie Jansen
Number of participants: 4
Duration: 2 hours
Content info: awkwardness, dubbing porn
The room was a little too warm. Any second now. He could hear how her moaning changed, softer now, and then, his turn; With a bellow he dropped into the most thunderous laugh he had ever mustered, just at the same second she turned into a high pitch scream.“That’s a wrap, excellent guys!” I really believed in that orgasm scream!” He finally dared to take his eyes of the screen, letting his eyes wander over to the other microphone. She was smiling at him. In a voice miles away from the one she had used just a minute ago she suddenly said: “Impressive laugh! I’m Snow, nice to meet you!”In Sexcraft, you play voice actors who are dubbing a hentai movie. This is a humorous feel-good larp where four strangers become friends and lovers.
Superrealism
Designers: Lauri Lukka
Designers and larprunners present: Lauri Lukka
Number of participants: 10-20
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: intense emotions, the larp requires movement
A mountain overlooks a mansion overgrown with vine – there, an esoteric new-age self-development seminar is just about to begin. Soon, the ceremony escalates and the spiritual pilgrim’s ego is left behind. The pilgrim enters the associative, symbolic, and synesthetic planes of remedy following a mystical bird… Yet, the path is uncertain.
Will the pilgrims find the infinite emotional expression of self-dissolving unity, the moment that they could call present? SUPERREALISM is a powerful, music driven avantgarde larp about searching and finding.
Welcome to the World
Designers: Sergio Losilla
Designers and larprunners present: Sergio Losilla
Number of participants: 6-12
Duration: 3 hours
Content info: physical touch
Finally, the day has arrived! A new litter of humanoids fresh from the vats
will be brought to their assigned family, who cannot wait to shower them with love. A feel-good scenario to indulge in the pleasure of caring and being cared for.