Event programme
| 2.8. Friday 17-22 | Runtime | Participants | Designer | Content info | Accessibility info |
| Group | 4 hours | 4-15 | Bart Price | mental health issues | stairs to basement (TSL lecture hall) |
| inside:outside | 4 hours | 10-20 | Eirik Fatland and Mike Pohjola | violence, oppression, prison | a couple of stairs (Jokistudio) |
| Only Moment Left | 4 hours | 3-9 | Pihla Lehtinen | death of a loved one | a couple of stairs (Köysisali) |
| Perfect Human | 4-5 hours | 6-10 | Juhana Pettersson and Jaakko Stenros | maintaining a positive attitude | stairs to 2nd floor (Roof studio) |
| Seaside Prison | 5 hours | 8-16 | Kaisa Kangas, Martin Nielsen, Mohamad Rabah, Essi Santala, Hannu Sinervä and Joona Pettersson | war, bombing, death of family member | accessible (Tehdas: sali) |
| Sexcraft | 2 hours | 4 | Frida Sofie Jansen and Tor Kjetil Edland | awkwardness, dubbing porn | threshold at doorstep (kynnys) (Puppet Studio) |
| Welcome to the World | 3 hours | 6-12 | Sergio Losilla | physical touch | accessible (LTA studio) |
| 3.8. Saturday 11-15 | Runtime | Participants | Designer | Content info | Accessibility info |
| 6th of August, part I: Sky | 4 hours | 10 | Aino H | war, death, mass destruction | stairs to 2nd floor (Roof studio) |
| A Cancelled Ice Skulpturing Contest Is Not a Northen Light | 2-3 hours | 4-6 | Patrik Balint | homophobia, broken home, hunting animals, child neglect (in the background story) | threshold at doorstep (kynnys) (Manilla residential space) |
| Devil in the Details | 4 hours | 6-10 | Hazel Anneke Dixon and Usva Inei | art making, demons | stairs to basement (TSL lecture hall) |
| End(less) Story | 4 hours | 7-15 | Nina Runa Essendrop | end of the world, death, the larp will contain interaction and communication through physical touch but participants can take it at their own pace, non-verbal | accessible (Tehdas: sali) |
| Sacrifice | 4 hours | 7 | Nadja Lipsyc and Nicola van Straaten | expressive movements, change of light and sound, fast-paced activity | threshold at doorstep (kynnys) (Puppet Studio) |
| Superrealism | 4 hours | 10-20 | Lauri Lukka | intense emotions, the larp requires movement | a couple of stairs (Jokistudio) |
| Cherry, Dust, Chair! | 3 hours | 5-20 | Frida Sofie Jansen | breaking balloons can create a loud noice, non-verbal | accessible (LTA studio) |
| 3.8. Saturday 17-21 | |||||
| 6th of August, part II: Earth | 4 hours | 10 | Aino H | war, death, mass destruction | stairs to 2nd floor (Roof studio) |
| Inner Domain | 4 hours | 6-12 | Vili von Nissinen and Nina Mutik | same sex desire, lesbians, romance, faith, rituals, physical touch on hands and arms | threshold at doorstep (kynnys) (Puppet Studio) |
| A Film Noir Murder Mystery | 4 hours | 6-10 | Freja Gyldenstrøm | alcohol, murder, domestic violence, sex, sexism (violence is played out in theatre style, and sex scenes are represented with saxophone music and moaning) | accessible (Tehdas: sali) |
| Lupus | 2 hours | 1-20 | Katri Lassila and Antti Kanner | illness, psychological stress, difficult diagnostic process, the illness is portrayed as a supernatural entity with a potentially frightening appearance | stairs to basement (TSL lecture hall) |
| Monet and the Moment | 3-4 hours | 12-20 | Ann Kristine Eriksen and Danny Wilson | death of loved ones, physical decay, mild physical touch | a couple of stairs (Jokistudio) |
| The One That Got Away | 2-3 hours | 3-20 | Jamie MacDonald | family, death | accessible (LTA studio) |
| Mates, Dates and Sleepovers | 3-4 hours | 3-5 | Lele Kauppila | portraying 14-year-old girls, sitting on the floor | threshold at doorstep (kynnys) (Manilla residential space) |
Descriptions of the larps
6th of August, part I: Sky
Photo: Fidel Ramos
Designers: Aino H
Designers and larprunners present: Aino H
Time: Saturday 11:00
Number of participants: 10
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: war, death, mass destruction
Accessibility info: played at Roof studio, stairs to 2nd floor
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.
The purpose of both Part I: Sky and Part II: Earth of 6th of August is to focus on the experience of everyday life: we bring the atomic bombing alive by depicting the normalcy that prevailed before it. 6th of August is not about “war heroes” or “villains” but about ordinary people. The larp is played in a slow style without dramatic events, big revelations or such. The purpose is to give a reminder of the cruelty of nuclear weapons and the fact that humanity has used them twice.
In Part I: Sky, all characters are male but players of any gender can portray them. Even though the events are historical, the characters are fictional.
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
Time: Saturday 17:00
Number of participants: 10
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: war, death, mass destruction
Accessibility info: played at Roof studio, stairs to 2nd floor
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 or at least something for a dinner. They make plans for today, for the next week, next month.
Even though the events are historical, the characters are fictional.
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 Skulpturing Contest Is Not a Northen Light
Designers: Patrik Balint
Designers and larprunners present: Patrik Balint
Time: Saturday 11:00
Number of participants: 4-6
Duration: 2-3 hours
Content info: homophobia, broken home, hunting animals, child neglect (in the background story)
Accessibility info: played at Manilla residential space, threshold to the door (kynnys)
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 on the back seat and the radio is playing rock music.
Cherry, Dust, Chair!
Designers: Frida Sofie Jansen
Designers and larprunners present: Frida Sofie Jansen
Time: Saturday 11:00
Number of participants: 5-20
Duration: 3 hours
Content info: breaking balloons can create a loud noice
Accessibility info: played at LTA Studio, accessible
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
Time: Saturday 17:00
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
Accessibility info: played at Puppet Studio, threshold to the door (kynnys)
“We must make what is forbidden visible.”
Inner Domain explores sexuality between women through the esoteric. It is based on 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 with each other in 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.
The characters are based on or inspired by actual members of Hilma af Klint’s groups. Rituals in the larp are based on actual practices and seances. The focus is on lesbian erotic tension and drama.
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
Time: Saturday 11:00
Number of participants: 6-10
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: art making, demons
Accessibility info: played at TSL lecture hall, stairs to basement
It is Summer 1987 and your family has come together to perform a powerful ritual. In order to keep living your extravagant lifestyle, you are going to have to pledge yourself to a dark and mysterious power. Using an ancient first edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, you’ve managed to find a way to store hardships – poverty, obsolescence, ageing – into a portrait. However, with any benefit comes dangerous warnings. What consequences might arise from making a deal with the devil?
Devil in the Details explores morality, relationships, and deep dark secrets. Having conducted a powerful ritual to realize their wildest dreams, characters will be facing the consequences of their actions as well as the demons that now control their fate.
There are two alternating scenes. In the first, you will play a socialite family and live out their personal dramas. In the second, you will play demons who have control over individual family members’ fates. During this part, you will edit portraits of your characters using art materials.
End(less) Story
Designers: Nina Runa Essendrop
Designers and larprunners present: Nina Runa Essendrop
Time: Saturday 11:00
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
Accessibility info: played at Tehdassali, accessible
End(less) Story is set in the near future. The world has ended. In the silent moments that follow, a group of the last humans lingers outside of time and space. Before they can move on to whatever comes next, they must dive into their lived experience to find little snippets of their lives, which they write down and weave together, creating a fingerprint of the world that no longer exists.
End(less) Story is an abstract, poetic larp where the players construct a fragmented story by interpreting physical sensations and shadow images they create together (or alone) within a shifting landscape of light. It is an exploration of the moments that make up our experience of life and the way we consciously construct our sense of reality together.
A Film Noir Murder Mystery
Designers: Freja Gyldenstrøm
Designers and larprunners present: Freja Gyldenstrøm
Time: Saturday 17:00
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).
Accessibility info: Played at Tehdassali, accessible
“The rain is pouring hard on the tin roof as the Detective pours a whisky. He isn’t expecting a single visitor – not just ’cause of the weather, but because everything’s been going to hell lately, including his career. And then: a knock on the door.
‘Something dreadful’s happened’, says the Dame in the red dress. She needs help. Help only he can provide.”
A Film Noir Murder Mystery is a classy blackbox larp with colourful lighting and moody sound. It focuses on Old Hollywood clichés and movie moments. You will take on the dual roles of film set workers and film noir archetypes, taking turns to direct the scenes.
The larp is a playful exploration of life in the city where dark clouds are always gathering. Load up on movie cliché moments and take part in creating and directing the story to explore the murder mystery genre through drama, comedy, and smooth jazz.
There will be costumes and props available that fit well within the film noir world. You are more than welcome to bring some additional to lend to the experience.
Group
Designers: Bart Price
Designers and larprunners present: Bart Price
Time: Friday 17:00
Number of participants: 4-15
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: mental health issues
Accessibility info: played at TSL lecture hall, stairs to basement
A new therapy group meets for the first time. It is led by an innovative holistic therapy facilitator who utilises the power of role-play and performance as a means to explore the psychological interiority of its members.
Group is set in present day. Members of the therapy group range in age, occupation and the personal struggles they face. The larp explores role-play as a therapeutic technique and is loosely inspired by the field of psychodrama.
Psychodrama is sometimes higlighted as an example of collective role-play prior to the development of larp. Thus, in addition to exploring group therapy, Group is a larp that delves into the nature of larp. It examines performativity and construction of identity and reality. The self is constructed in relation to others, yet at the same time it has a desire to individuate itself from the group.
inside:outside
Photo: Frode Dybvad
Designers: Eirik Fatland and Mike Pohjola
Designers and larprunners present: Mike Pohjola
Number of participants: 10-20
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: violence, oppression, prison
Accessibility info: played at Jokistudio, a couple of stairs
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
Time: Friday 17:00
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
Accessibility info: played at TSL lecture hall, stairs to basement
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 larp encourages participants to immerse in a situation where their physical and mental capabilities are at risk. The purpose of Lupus is to challenge participants to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as coping with challenges.
During the larp, players will get to experience both the roles of patients and medical professionals. The drama evolves around the patients’ experiences on the diagnostic journey. The creature Lupus will interact with the patients, bringing its own views and challenges to their interactions with medical professionals but at the same time helping the patients communicate their needs.
Lupus is based on real experiences, gathered from patients with SLE.
Mates, Dates and Sleepovers
Designers: Lele Kauppila
Designers and larprunners present: Lele Kauppila
Time: Friday 17:00
Number of participants: 3-5
Duration: 3-4 hours
Content info: portraying 14-year-old girls, sitting on the floor
Accessibility info: played at Manilla residential space, a threshold to the door (kynnys)
“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 girls play spin the bottle at a sleepover. It is time to gossip about school, hobbies, annoying parents, and – of course! – cute boys. The larp is loosely based on Cathy Hopkins’s Mates, Dates book series.
The aim is to experience a slice from the life of a 14-year-old girl with her very important dreams and worries that might seem mundane from a wider perspective. You will play the perfect girls’ night where all the school dramas and secret crushes are revealed.
Before the larp, players have an option to define topics or themes they don’t want to explore. Mates, Dates and Sleepovers is open to players of all genders and sexual orientations.
Monet and the Moment
Designers: Ann Kristine Eriksen and Danny Wilson
Designers and larprunners present: Ann Kristine Eriksen and Danny Wilson
Time: Friday 17:00
Number of participants: 12-20
Duration: 3-4 hours
Content info: death of loved ones, physical decay, mild physical touch
Accessibility info: played at Jokistudio, a couple of stairs
Camille takes a last breath while they stare into each other’s eyes. They dissolve into a plethora of colours, her body into intense blue and grey. Monet gathers his brushes and starts painting.
Monet and the Moment is a sensory journey through Claude Monet’s memories, and his obsessive chase of 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.
You play Monet painting the moment, the Moment being painted by Monet. You play moments from his life and the beautiful madness.
The One That Got Away
Designers: Jamie MacDonald
Designers and larprunners present: Jamie MacDonald
Time: Saturday 17:00
Number of participants: 3-20
Duration: 2-3 hours
Content info: family, death
Accessibility info: played at LTA Studio, accessible
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. Is this really the time?
“Did I make you proud?”, “What did I do wrong?”, “Does he even like me as a person?”, “Why can’t he understand?”. These questions are clichés in the relationship between fathers and their children, but here they will play into the fantasy we harbor about settling the score once and for all with our relatives, with finally fixing and defining our feelings for each other and proving the existence of unconditional love.
This is a larp for three to four players: father, son, and spirits/fish. There will be a plenty of silence.
Only Moment Left
Designers: Pihla Lehtinen
Designers and larprunners present: Pihla Lehtinen
Time: Friday 17:00
Number of participants: 3-9
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: death of a loved one
Accessibility info: played at Köysisali, a couple of stairs
eyes meet and they know this is
for three of them
a last
fragile moment
Only Moment Left is a ghost story about love, loss and things left unsaid.
Three queer poets are entangled in platonic and romantic love. One of them suddenly died a year ago and now comes back for a last moment together. There is a tension between the short and fragile nature of this moment and a desperate need to make the most of it. What needs to be said? What is better left unsaid? Do you need to seek closure or can you just be in the moment?
This queer feminist chamber larp explores poetic as a play style.
The Perfect Human
Photo: Tuomas Puikkonen
Designers: Juhana Pettersson and Jaakko Stenros
Designers and larprunners present: Juhana Pettersson and Jaakko Stenros
Time: Friday 17:00
Number of participants: 6-10
Duration: 4-5 hours
Content info: maintaining a positive attitude
Accessibility info: played at Roof Studio, stairs to 2nd floor
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! The Perfect Human is a larp about an ideal seen in corporate stock photos: The smiling, happy office workers in bright, well-lit environments. Colleagues leaning to look at spreadsheets, supportive yet bland. This is the face of modern success, happy and entirely without personality.
In the larp, you discover what it’s like to be one of these people and live a day of their perfect lives. You’ll attend three client meetings at the consulting company Creative Solutions, brainstorming amazing solutions to the problems people bring to you. As you do this, you support your colleagues and cheer their ideas. You are supported in turn as your work friends see the value you bring to the workplace.
There is no twist or subversion. Simply perfect corporate happiness. Be one of the perfect people in the world of stock photos!
A photographer captures the entire experience, striving for larp photos that look as much like stock photos as possible.
Other things to note: Unlike most larps at Immersion, The Perfect Human has a dress code: business, business casual or smart casual. Dress as if you worked in the office of a consulting company.
Sacrifice
Designers: Nadja Lipsyc and Nicola van Straaten
Designers and larprunners present: Nadja Lipsyc and Nicola van Straaten
Time: Saturday 11:00
Number of participants: 7
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: expressive movements, change of light and sound, fast-paced activity
Accessibility info: played at Puppet Studio, a threshold to the door (kynnys)
“People of the land, it has come to my attention that you are burning with dreams and desires! I will give you the opportunity to realise your dreams, and after a long long time when your dreams are up and rising, I will come back and you will fulfil your part of the pact. You will give me a sacrifice.”
Sacrifice explores our relationships to land, to cities and to desire through the idea of sacrifice, or what needs to be given up. People of a land enter into pact with a mysterious entity who offers them a city but will return to ask for a sacrifice.
The larp moves from non-verbal to verbal. You will build a city together out of chairs, strings, brown tape and of more symbolic pieces for the heart and life of the city. And when you have finished building your dreams, what are you ready to sacrifice for them?
Sacrifice larp involves expressive contact between players, repeated standing and sitting, sometimes loud music and changes of lights.
Seaside Prison
Photo: Joona Pettersson
Designers: Kaisa Kangas, Martin Nielsen, Mohamad Rabah, Essi Santala, Hannu Sinervä and Joona Pettersson
Designers and larprunners present:
Time: Friday 17:00
Number of participants: 8-16
Duration: 5 hours
Content info: war, bombing, death of family member
Accessibility info: played at Tehdassali, accessible
Finland is under occupation. You live in Marienhamn, on the Åland Islands. The city has become an open-air prison. Once in a while it is bombed.
Seaside Prison is a Palestinian-Finnish-Norwegian larp that deals with the siege of Gaza trough an alternative reality setting where 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
Time: Friday 17:00
Number of participants: 4
Duration: 2 hours
Content info: awkwardness, dubbing porn
Accessibility info: played at Puppet Studio, a threshold to the door (kynnys)
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
Time: Saturday 11:00
Number of participants: 10-20
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: intense emotions, the larp requires movement
Accessibility info: played at Jokistudio, a couple of stairs
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 begins to hungrily explore the associative, symbolic, and synesthetic planes of remedy. Whisper! Mumble! Cry out!
Far in the distance, the Mountain grows and growls. To find its heart, the pilgrim needs to traverse surrealist scenes of avant-garde innovation. Gratefully, they are aided. The music of the world is their wind, their bodies are the wings. Pace! Skip! Swirl!
Yet, the path is uncertain. Will the pilgrim ever find the Blackbird of the Ridge, the infinite emotional expression of self-dissolving unity, the moment that they could call the present?
SUPERREALISM is a powerful, music driven avant-garde larp about searching and finding. The larp is played without verbal expression through embodied expression.
Welcome to the World
Designers: Sergio Losilla
Designers and larprunners present: Sergio Losilla
Time: Friday 17:00
Number of participants: 6-12
Duration: 3 hours
Content info: physical touch
Accessibility info: played at LTA Studio, accessible
Finally, the day has arrived! A new litter of humanoids fresh from the vats will be brought to their assigned family.
The house is ready. Nobody in the family can hide their excitement. The fresh humanoid puppies will arrive any second now! So disoriented and vulnerable, with everything to learn about the world! For some of the family members, this will be the first time they will take care of puppies since they were a puppy themselves, while other have cared for many litters, seeing them grow and move on to other families.
Welcome to the World is a feel-good scenario to indulge in the pleasure of caring and being cared for.