Heal the Hell

One of my favourite activities during a youth exchange was LARP – Live action role playing, a game similar to a drama play, where the players are being given a character, the direct or indirect connections with other characters and the starting point. There are no lines, no exact scenario, everything must happen accordingly to the character, connections and tasks, which can be individual or not. The whole game is supervised by a Game Master, a person that prepares the plot and who has the power to help players with the mechanics of the game.

The LARP I played during Do you agree? project in Poland was called Club 27. The time for preparation was short, there was a workshop before the game where our organizer explained us what it is and the basic rules and we had up to 3 hours from the moment we got our characters to the point where the game started. It was played on a single level of the building, with 3 different spaces: the Hell, the Earth and the Heaven. Decoration and background music were decided conforming to each space.

They say the first rock legend taken by The Devil was Elvis Presley, The King. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Whinehouse are just a few names that followed Elvis, much younger, all dying at the age of 27 in weird circumstances. That’s how they all ended in Hell, after signing the pact with the Devil, giving their soul in change for money and fame. They’re now spending their eternities surrounded by Satan, her daughter and Azazel, still taking advantage of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll in the Underworld, until the rumour spreads, that Satan wants to bring more people in Hell, new singers such as Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. Because bad music would have made eternity even more unbearable, a group forms plotting against the Devil and the new artists trying to escape and change things, whilst Elvis behaves unbelievably mysterious, the only one who can actually visit Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth everyone seems to have fun at a music festival, crowded with fans, volunteers, drug dealers, Jesus in disguise and artists, including the ones mentioned above, wanted by the Devil but hated by the Hell. God sends Jesus with the archangel Michal in Hell to bring people from there, whose punishments have ended, and to replace these people with other ones from Earth.

On Earth there is this Blessed Child, a woman whose touch they say could kill the Devil, ending the dictature and placing Elvis as the new ruler. While both Jesus and Elvis are looking for the same girl, she’s well hidden through the beer cans and crazy fans at the music festival on Earth.

One of the people Jesus resurrects for the sake of good old music is Jim Morrison, ex singer in The Doors. But at the end of His journey, Satan makes a bet with Him and she wins. So Jesus can never go back to Hell again, but can pass His powers to other people in order to save the other good ones from under the terror of Satan. At this moment unfortunately, a crazy fan kills Justin Bieber and the games stops, after approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes.

Conforming to the participants that shared their opinions with the organizer the following day, the pluses of the game were: food at all corners, enough time to prepare, not knowing the characters before gave a sense of new, and the minuses: no wine in Hell, didn’t last enough, tasks were in some cases vague and difficult to understand, God complained of having too much power.

In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting ways of learning new verbal and non-verbal communication skills and gaining cognitive abilities. It’s certainly the most interesting game I took part in until now and I’m looking forward to play another LARP as soon as possible. It was an interactive form of non-formal education where we learnt a lot of new things while having a lot of fun, seeing Justin Bieber dying at the end, when we closed our eyes and heard that there are just 2 more hours left of the year 2017, so let’s clean the Congress Room and Let the Feast Begin.

Short conclusion? #Erasmus+GoingMad. Or to Hell? I guess we’ll all see in the pictures.