Are you familiar with Vincent Baker’s *Bedlam Beautiful?* It’s a dark and disturbing game about emotional violence in the veins of Firebrands, The King is Dead, etc.
I tried it out a couple of times and realized that at it’s core it actually has a very hopeful and positive assumption about finding true love (by true love I don’t mean the romanticized notion of ‘the One’, but a mutual and emancipated relationship).
So a few weeks ago I used #BedlamBeautiful as the basis for a 2-day-long sensitivity training in a theater and drama summer camp. I dissected the game and reused everything I could (places, tones, appearances, characters, rules about speaking, actual lines). I used techniques from #Bibliodrama and #PlaybackTheater, and ‘conventions’ from #ProcessDrama. This way we explored the topics of getting acquainted, emotional violence, toxic relationships, safety considerations, etc. The students loved it!
The coolest thing is that my colleague used these experiences to assemble a theater play, and with my assistance she made a very Lynchian, surreal show with the kids. Just in 3 intense days. It’s title was *Bleat* (goats are hip again since the #VVitch!). So to officially inform you all: *PbtA games are going on stage!* 😀
Cool, thanks! Vincent and I are very pleased with our design work in Bedlam Beautiful. I’d love to hear more about this, especially how you adapted what we designed as a three-player game into a program for a whole camp!
I’ve done a fair amount of improv theater, and a LOT of ritual design and personal transformational space support. I’d be very interested in your process!
NICE!
Meguey Baker Oh, sry for not mentioning you 🙁 I’ve never heard of ‘ritual design’ and ‘personal transformational space support’. I need to check these things out.
My work is in Hungarian but I try to highlight some features for you.
The first day was mostly about group dynamics and basic Playback Theater techniques (living statue, choir). It builded trust, prepared us for the topic and gave the players tools.
The second day was mostly about Bedlam Beautiful.
First I builded some context for the game:
1. We talked about the story of Mad Maudlin, Alice novels, Harry Potter, etc to contextualize the story.
2. We used the technique of Soundscape with a darkened room to create together the atmosphere of the scenes in BB.
3. Players in groups of 4 created creatures (living statues) based on the appearences in BB.
2. The same with improvised surreal creatures similar to BB, Alice or ETA Hoffmann stories.
3. Then the audience could interact with this complex creatures – but 1-1 lines only. It showed unbalanced relationships (similar to Player vs The System and The Disease) pand repared us for the second part.
The second part, still preparing:
1. I handed them the *But…* list from BB and asked them to somehow rank or scale them alone.
2. We talked about their decisions, why do they choose one of the answers as the most awful reply, why we basically cannot (should not?) rank these at all, why these are all a form of emotional violence, what is emotional violence and toxic relationship actually, etc.)
3. We gradually turned simple, polite requests and sentences into extortion, etc.
Third block: gaming
1. With sociometry we decided who is ready for what and then I paired them into couples.
2. The couples would work with 3 lines form the *But* list chosen by themselves. They created short scenes with the sentences and showed them. Most of them was quite realistic.
3. A parody of the stupid dating reality show. The boys got roles from BB (The Man in the Moon, Satan’s Cook, The Chaplain, A Gentleman, Tom O’Bedlam), they stayed in a pose like statues. The girls could ask 1 question to someone one by one in turns. The boys had to convince the girls that they are the ‘One’. My instructions were not good enough because the player of Tom was too nice. One girl still chose The Man in the Moon 🙂
3. We talked about their choice, life experiences, unconditional and conditional love, safety measures and things you can do when you witness emotional violence.
On the afternoon we did contact dance and trust bulding excersises. I put them in a witchcraft/madness/daydreaming themed story which still had a lot of connection with the story of Mad Maudlin.
The actual stage show created by my colleague mixed all these things with a Hungarian short story about shallow teenagers taking drugs and forming an abusive relationship…
If you have any other question, please feel free to ask.