Thoughts on Reading Lizzie Stark's In Residency

I don’t normally post about the shorter games I read, although I do occasionally, when something strikes me, I suppose.  Lizzie Stark’s “In Residency” is a 48-page text for a larp, which was shared on the Bully Pulpit patreon page.  If you enjoy Jason Morningstar’s games and brain, I highly recommend backing their patreon at the $5 level.  You get access to games and works in progress and other interesting posts.  Starting last month, they shared some of the work of Jeeyon Shim, with whom Jason was collaborating.  This month, the featured collaborative artist is Lizzie Stark, and to kick things off, they shared this game along with the transcript of an interview of her by Jason.  So that’s how I came to have and read “In Residency.”
 
I have never played in a larp and don’t have any intentions or desires to do so, but I love reading the texts of these thoughtful American Freeform larps.  At their most evocative, which “In Residency” most certainly is, the reading is like watching a preview for a really good movie.  You see what the themes are, who the cast of characters are, what the nature of the conflicts are, and all the space for drama and emotional play—all in these little bits and flashes that you tie together with your imagination.  The premise of “In Residency” is that the players play a group of artists who have earned residency at the elite artists’ colony Brython.  Each artist within the game has a past trauma that is the foundation of the piece or pieces of art that they are working on during their tenure at the colony.  The game itself takes place over two days a week or so apart and consists primarily of the social half hour before and after dinner during which the artists mingle, flirt, share stories, and generally come together after their long day of isolated creation and before their long evening of the same.  The characters will get drunk, seek attention, have affairs, and it will all culminate in someone burning a work of art.
 
One of the things I love about reading this kind of larp is that everything is laid out so simply and directly, disguising all the hard design work it took to make it that way.  The basic structure and needs are quite simple really.  You need to give the players characters who are primed for drama, with existing relationships, insecurities, concerns, etc.  You need to give the players something for the characters to engage with and discuss at a superficial level in order to reveal the good stuff.  You need to build in the thematic content into the characters, their backgrounds, and their conversational topics in order for it to blossom in play without any conscious effort on the part of the players.  “In Residency” does all of that elegantly and compellingly.
 
The characters all have a particular artistic form that no other character shares exactly.  There might be three writers, but one will be a poet, another a novelist, and a third a playwright.  Each character summary is brief, but full of who they are as artists and who they hope to be as artists.  In addition, they have relationships in the outside world in various states of growth or decay.  And each character has a unique trauma that fuels their work.  This is all information quick and easy to deliver or put together before play, but it gives all the players a rich background to influence their decisions during play.  Additionally, each “day” of play is begun with a guided meditation by the organizer or organizers.  This meditation is only 5 or so minutes long, but it gets the players thinking about the non-played day of artistic labor that preceded the social events of the evening about to be played.  The meditations focus on objects and each artist’s trauma and the struggle to turn that material into art.  It’s a simple but effective way to engage the players in what has immediately preceded the scene about to be played.  It gives the players still more specific material to bring to the scene as they discuss their day of creation, their struggles and triumphs.
 
A lot of work is also done to give players permission to play into their characters’ weaknesses and make bad decisions.  They are encouraged to do so outright, but they are also given information about the artists’ colony that also sets the stage for interpersonal risks.  For example, all the players are told that their characters each know someone who has been to an artists’ colony before and that it is common knowledge that everyone has an affair with someone during their stay.  And of course, play begins with a workshop that covers safety techniques, getting to know your character, and getting comfortable acting in potentially silly ways in front of each other.  One of the things covered during the workshop are the various mechanics, which include how to slip away to have an “off-screen” affair and how to skinny-dip in game, because, yeah, there is skinny-dipping in this larp! Talk about a fun way to encourage flirtation and interpersonal drama.
 
I had a ton of fun reading this larp, and if this were the setup for a movie, I’d have already bought my ticket.