La Sirena Varada (The Stranded Mermaid) is a contemporary larp about the dwellers of a community built outside of conventional society, people who eschew common sense for the pursue of fantasy and dreams… and their descent into madness. http://somnia-larp.wixsite.com/lasirenavarada/vision
The Republic of the Free, near Granada in Spain, is constantly in sunshine during the day and overlooked at night by thousands of stars. People gather for meals, never eating alone. The food is delicious and the wine and beer are plentiful. You can spend your days sitting by the pool, singing along to music played by talented musicians and watch people dance, the brightness of their clothes and the rhythm of their movements almost hypnotic. You can write, sitting among friends, or alone among incredible beauty. Your strangeness and eccentricities aren't just accepted but celebrated. You can feel at one with the people around you.
 |
| The cave where Gea and other members of the community lived. |
But better than that you can believe. You can live in a world where if anything bad happens you are simply gathering the power to fight it. And world where nothing and no one ever leaves you.
I admit that I was originally a little apprehensive about this larp. My friend pitched it to me as an incredible, almost life changing experience, but I was unsure what to expect. The Mediterranean larping style was new to me and my character, Gea, seemed like she would be challenging to play. She was a mother who had lost her child, but couldn't let go and I was worried about how to portray her.
I needn't have worried. I was able to understand and immerse in my character within the first few hours of play. You are given an outline of your character when you're cast which in my case included the traumas she had suffered, the terrible things she had done and the delusions that she embraced to deal with it. Maybe it was my decision to write a backstory for her and the fact I was always aware that she had been someone else, however much she tried to forget it, which led to the conclusion of my game.
As a player I felt so safe during the larp. It didn't feel like there was any pressure to step over boundaries I had set (at least in my own experience of play) and in scenes of confrontation (and my character was very confrontational) I felt that the other players were aware of the out of character dynamics of the scene and acted accordingly. This trust of my fellow players let me play some challenging scenes and be vulnerable in a way I've never managed during a multi-day international larp before.
Mo Holkar talks here about last year's run and the techniques used so I won't repeat them, except to say that I had very powerful experiences in both the shadow caves and the Waters Divine and I felt they were very effective techniques.
Prior to the game there was some pre-play, forming impressions and relationships. I feel like a lot of things that we agreed out of character would have probably occurred in character anyway. One of the things it did give me with some characters was a sense of which buttons to push to annoy, upset or make them happy, so I could approach them already knowing their views. In that sense it was useful, but not necessary.
As much as I would love to recount what happened scene for scene I have already bored many people with it! But this was a beautiful larp, with a community of damaged people who seemed to be pushing each other deeper and deeper into their delusions and away from the real world.
My game ended with Gea and another character, Comrade, declaring their real names and running from the community, away from the light and towards the darkness of the surrounding land. Gea (Melinda now) was blinded by tears, running because she was scared of being followed, running because if she stopped she might turn back. I wonder what happened to them and how they fared, faced with reality.
