What Stays Behind

Nostalgia, moving on, community

Designers: Yanina Zaichanka and Yuliya Safronava
Number of participants: 6–20
Duration: 4 hours
The presenter feels that this larp IS suitable for young people aged 16+

About the larp

In this world, there are Humans and there are Shadows. The Humans at this point of their lives have to part with their past and commence a lone journey into the unknown guided by the Shadows. It will be a long night’s journey, but in the end there will be the sun rising. It is an abstract non-verbal larp which is mostly played in pairs and also involves some group interaction. It is about nostalgia, moving on, discovering how we come together in the face of adversity. In the first act your characters will be leaving memories behind, towards something new, so there will be emotions of loss and sadness, but the larp will end leaving your characters with a feeling of hope and newly discovered friendship.

Content Warnings: As part of the character creation process we use different objects for the players to base their characters’ memories on them. The only triggering that may arise is that the players may come up with close-to-home memories/characters and parting in that context might be challenging for them.

Presented by

Yuliya Safronava: I participated in Larp Writers’ Summer School in 2015 and since then has been an active member of the Belarussian Educational Organization “POST” which focuses on running larps in Belarus to promote civil society etc. I am one of the organizers of Social Larp Festival in Minsk (we ran it in 2017 and 2018) where we facilitate the process of writing larps for those who have no/little experience in it. I am also responsible for running larps on a two-week basis in Minsk on behalf of our organization (we call it play-days). I ran the larps written in cooperation with other authors (Asylum at Social Larp Festival 2017 in Minsk, Thanks God It’s Friday at Minsk Larp Festival 2018 and at Tallinn Larp Festival 2018, What Stays Behind at Minsk Larp Festival 2019).

Parameters

Physical contact There might be some contact but it is not a must. We ask the players if they are OK with some light touching, if they are not, it is totally playable without it.
Romance and intimacy Not relevant for the larp
Conflict and violence Not relevant for this larp
Communication style Non-verbal sounds
Movement style The larp may involve some walking, sitting, lying and even some dancing
Characters We have pre-written cards with some basic info (age, experience and occupation) but the players create everything else by themselves
Narrative control Players have some influence over story, but there is basically a script or structure that they’re within
Transparency Fully transparent – players will, or at least can, know absolutely everything in advance
Representation level Scenery and props will be used to make the play space look something like the fictional space
Play culture In the 1st Act the participants play in pairs, in the 2nd Act they form two gropus and build two new separate communities
Tone Moderate

Sunday afternoon, Studio 8