Playable Theatre Live Action Symposium

The IndieCade/Playable Theatre Live Action Games Online Symposium, taking place in multiple time zones October 16th and 17th, brings together interdisciplinary creators from around the world—from larp, interactive theatre, and pervasive games—to share knowledge, experience and techniques from this emerging artform. This international event will take place over a 24-hour period, and include workshops, playshops, roundtable discussions, global round ups, formal and informal networking/collaboration opportunities.

Targeted to creative practitioners working in immersive and interactive theatre forms, the symposium features inspirational and practical content in a variety of formats and including:

Special keynote with Gary Izzo, author of the pioneering 1997 book The Art of Play
Global Round Ups on playable theatre and larping in the UK, China, and Europe
In-depth workshops and playshops on topics such as adaptation, acting for interaction, transformative play, and online improvisation with Netprov
Discipline-bridging sessions such as “What is…a game designer?” and “What is…a dramaturg?” and “What is…devising?” and a games+theatre terminology word game
Creative roundtable discussions
Informal networking on Discord, social hours and mealtime drop-ins at the Playable Pony Pub in Gather.Town
Featured speakers include:
- Jason Morningstar, creator of Fiasco and co-author of the Festival award-winning LARP The Lesser Players’ Tale (US)
- Cat Jones and Julia Ellingboe, creators of The Sleepover (Honey & Hot Wax, SLarpFest)
- Yan Xie, Archimedes Inspiration (China, UK)
- Graham Walmsley, creator of the larps Will That Be All and Marinara (UK)
- Becky Annison, Director of Engagement at The Chancery Lane Project (UK)
- Tom Mansfield, Upstart Theatre (UK)
- Kellian Pletcher Adams, Creator of Club Drosselmeyer (US)
- Jamie Harper, Hobo Theatre (UK)
- Sharang Biswas, designer of IndieCade award-winner Feast, and editor of nominee Honey & Hot Wax larp anthology (US)
- Caro Murphy, Creative Director of Incantrix (US) and Co-Executive Director, Playable Theatre
- Celia Pearce, Co-Executive Director, Playable Theatre (Symposium Chair)

SEE ALL OF OUR PLAYABLE THEATRE SPEAKERS

Programming will take place from 9am 16 October Eastern Standard time until 9am 17 October, with special programming keyed to different time zones. Calendar below will update to your local timezone.

About Playable Theatre https://playabletheatre.org/
Playable Theatre was launched in 2018 at Northeastern University to support creators of participatory, theatrical events—embodied experiences where audiences have meaningful agency to influence the outcome. The Playable Theatre nonprofit launched in 2020 and has partnered with IndieCade on two other projects: SLarpFest: A mini-larp festival in Second Life, and IndieCade – Beyond Screens, a Twitch series devoted to games that explore the gaming space around and outside of screens.

Celia Pearce, Symposium Chair
Celia Pearce is an award-winning game designer, author and Professor at Northeastern University. She is co-founder IndieCade and the Playable Theatre Project. Her publications include Communities of Play (MIT Press 2009) and a larping chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 2 (2016). Her games have appeared at the Smithsonian, Museum of Fine Art Boston, and Incubate in the Netherlands. She has run larps at Living Games – A Week in Boston, Sandcon, and SLarpFest, a mini online larp festival in the virtual world Second Life which she co-organized in March of 2021.

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