FRAGOs and AARs

AAR for October 18th

As usual, we didn't follow my plan at all. Just a bit of silly running and mirror/conductor, then took a few moments to play with the dog, then played with chalk. It turned out that the players were happy as hell to play with chalk, which affirms my principle of this project, where every game session must be driven by the talents and predilections of the players. Started off as just a bit of exquisite corpse play, where one person made a shape on the ground, then the next would make a shape in reaction, then the next, then the next. Then I grabbed more chalk and started breaking the rules and invited the three other players (only four of us total, which limits the games a little) to also break the rules, and then it went from there, till we had mostly covered the concrete ellipsis with colored squiggles, squares, triangles, spirals, lines, lakes, galaxies, a few animals, some words. It went through a few iterations of what the hell we were doing. For a minute it looked like a map from lord of the rings, and so we decided this country needed a name, so I suggested we each choose a letter, then yell it out, then we arrange the four letters , and looked like a country map for a minute, which we named, using a game where four of us said a letter, then we took the four letters and arranged them into something that seemed like something, then did that three more times, and came up with a very nonsensical but fun word for a country. Eventually it became a board game, which we tried to play, to great but mixed success.

One new idea that came out from the day was about a new structure for it, and a new idea for accommodating the great variety of talents and predilections that players will come in with. It can be a whole day, with varying stations that folk can trickle in and out of. Some folk want to craft and draw. Some folk want to write. Some want to run. Some want to play dancing games. Some even might be willing to do army running cadences with me, and might learn that they want to do army running cadences. Some want to encounter deeper philosophies of game creation. Some want to just hang out and picnic with little nibbles and wine. All of want to do a little of all these things. It might be best to just make a day of it, where (audience->participants->creators) players can slip in and out of all of these little things. Make a day of it. Every time I do this thing, I learn something and figure out ways to try to make it better. What I learned today is that everyone wants something different, and that maybe the best way to work with this is to have a bunch of different games just being played, with a more facilitators. 

WARNO for October 18th

Below is my plan for the next game session. I've never been able to fully follow the plans I've made (and usually barely at all), but they're still useful, and below is the plan for October 18th. It may change as I look at old plans  and see what opportunities got missed, and see if some new impulses arise. 

One thing I want to work on generally is getting good at mixing up the pacing. Players need to be moving fast and with hard purpose so that we can create strange and interesting moments, as well slow and meandering so that we can recognize these resting moments, stop, catch them, and use them to build out new movements and games.

Another thing I still really want to develop before the winter is Affect running, and how to have us conjure specific feelings when we move. When I run in the park, I have great inspiration about how to sequence an interaction between running and feeling, but it's hard to hold onto, like a dream. In my dreams, the experience of gravity, that horrible curse, goes away. Then the morning comes. Waking and walking make it hard to reconjure. I''ll keep working on the ideas and the sequences to get us above ground. Here is a rough draft:

• • • • Run like you're sad. Write about what was in your mind when you ran, what made you so sad.

      • Run like your demons are hot on your heels. Write about what was in your mind when you ran, and what the heat felt like.

      • Run like you're hot on the heels of your demons. How did you get to be chasing them...

Regardless, a rough outline for the day: 

1. Opening: as early folk wait for late folk to arrive, we can do some terrain work. 

• Every performance suffers from the awkward minutes before it starts, when the audience is shuffling in and waiting, and reluctantly but enthusiastically encountering each other. Everyone wants to know where they are and who is around them, but nobody yet knows who they will be in this place. so nobody can say where nor who they are. They make small talk, reluctantly and enthusiastically. There must be something better to do with this time. My solution:

• As folk arrive, I instruct them to explore the terrain arounds the Rose Garden. Wander and explore everything within 200 meters, with two specific inquiries: tactics and in narrative. To get players thinking tactically, I ask them what they think the word means, and then, through dialogue, get them to a deeper understanding of it. To get them thinking in narrative, I ask them what they think it would mean for them to tell little stories about what happened in the little corners around this place, placing special attention to how the ground and vegetation inform their stories, and through dialoge, get them to a deeper understanding of it.

• The instruction: "as we wait for any late folk to arrive, I want you to explore the space around these three circles, to think about them tactically and narratively. I'm going to ask you what you think I mean when I ask what the words "tactically" and "narratively" mean." (this is what can make this game really good: that the purpose of it is really good terrain work, but also that it elicits the players' ideas.)

2. Background explanations. 1- Agreements, 2- the audience->participant->designer->creator principle

3. Set up nickname timebomb.

4. Chalk free play. Gets us some good practice making up rules and interacting with our fellow rule-makers.

5. Silly Run and other Movement Games (these are so damn fun.)

6. Lets's some new ideas for Conductor, a game that I intuited a while ago very independently, but then encountered other folk playing with the same idea, and then I was taught it explicitly (by the Deep Play Institute.) It's simple: one player, without using words, instructs the other players to move or make sounds in certain ways, and then someone else takes over

7. Then some basic Exquisite Corpses and other Writing Exercises to get us comfortable with the practice of writing and moving in intervals. Haiku is probably the best form to get us used to moving and writing and mixing our writing with other player's writings. 

8. Also, I'm still trying to build out some Affect running as well as games using Ceremonies and Performative Utterances.

Materials: minimal. Chalk, journals, perhaps a few other toys.

The AAR after September 20th

Nothing I planned happened at all, but we improvised well, and, while just scribbling with chalk, dragooned a random park wanderer into the play, who was happy as hell to play, and had some specific interest in it. Ultimately not much more happened besides some one word at a time stories (in spoken and written form.)

The WARNO for  September 20th

A. Opening Sets

1. Silly walks as folk arrive. I instruct the first player who arrives to follow what I do, until someone else shows up and then the first to arrive becomes the leader, until someone else shows up and then the second becomes the leader

2. Opening agreements. I explain quickly that you should push but protect yourself, other players, me, the park.

3. Why did you come? as interpreted in movement. I ask someone to tell us a little about themselves, and about why they decided to show up to this. As they start to describe, I stop them, and instruct everyone else to interpret the things they're describing through movement. 

4. Audience-participant-designer-creator. I ask a player to make up a rule, and we follow it. As this is happening, I explain that at every moment, you are free, and encouraged, to suggest new rules and new games ideas, or just ideas. Players will either ascent to the new rule by immediately following it, or, if it needs work, we can debate and develop the ideas into full games. 

5. Nickname timebomb. I assign you another player. At some at some point in the session, you'll notice that something fun or interesting will happen through that player which seems to suggest a good nickname. At this moment you yell STOP!, very loudly, and instruct the group that this person now has a nickname. 

B. Continuing

After the opening sets, everything is experiment and play. I' have a smattering of games to bring up, depending on how the participants have responded to what they've encountered before, but this phase gets built out naturally.

1. Silly running (point-man, mirror, conductor) with interruptions to ponder how to integrate writing into it. This might be the best way to create more writing games.

2. Explore the trails in the immediate vicinity, and use them to build out conceptual obstacle courses.

3. Affect motion. Introduction to the idea, and apologies for not having yet refined it more yet.

4. Ceremonies and performative utterances.

5. Notebook writing games!

6. Chalk games using the space.

7. Explore the space. Go off independently and notice the circles, start thinking of a story of the circles

8. Sit on one side of the circle and draw (or write about) what's on the other side without looking at your paper.

C. Some musings in the days preceding

I'm still really wanting to build-out the writing/moving games, but there have been challenges. As some background, the writing games typically have two variations: 

1. small texts, such as haiku or one sentence at a time stories, written in small segments of groups that get shuffled and reshuffled, and 

2. individual writing exercises/prompts, inspired by movements.

There are variations wherein they interact with movement games, but they're 

There is so much unrealized potential in the interaction of writing and moving games which hasn't quite come forth, so I'm going to try some new strategies, built around some earlier strategies that worked well. I give the audience my intention (inspiringly articulated), then ask them to think about games they've encountered or played that cohere with it, then explain a small example and we play it, and then, through brainstorming (with me as a facilitator and hype man), we create new games. The games need movement and writing. 

 Also, I'm noticing that players really like the silly running game, in its basic formulation and its variations (line, wedge, mirror, conductor, circle), so this should probably be a staple, and maybe even every day.

AAR (After Action Review) for 9/13

Preface: A total of 5 showed, and they trickled in, the last one about 15 minutes late. I realize this time when we're waiting for everyone to show up can be used better. Typically, it's just small talk, getting to know each other, but it can be turned into a gamespace. Maybe drawing, or writing?

Agreements: my explanations and openings worked, but got a little glitchy. I got to everything, but think it needed to be a bit clearer. I think I'll record myself saying them sometime, maybe while running, or moving silly. 

The concepts are simple and even elegant, "You agree to support yourself and push yourself. You agree to support the other players and push the other players. You agree to support me and push me." But I still think I'm stumbling over the explanation, and losing the elegance of the explanation. Perhaps I can say one of these and then ask a player to explain what they think it means. 

Principles for how participant becomes creator:  I think it all came across. But maybe I can start with a specific short poem singing of how "audience becomes participant becomes designer becomes creator." A song maybe. A performative utterance. 

Anyway, they pretty much got it. It is easier if you have encountered and interacted with this kind of thing before, in clowning or improv comedy or dance or exquisite corpse writing or maybe even teaching.

FRAGO (Fragmentary Order) for 9/13

As I describe elsewhere in these pages, each session is built-out by whoever comes. Audience becomes participant becomes designer becomes creator. That said, it helps me to have a suggested outline.

Nicknaming games: "I'm not going to remember anyone's name, so we're going to invent names, but we need  games to create one. It can happen now, or they can be discovered in the day." Some methods:

• someone receives a nickname, and then we reverse engineer a game that would create this nickname. 

• think of the title of your autobiography, or your fusion-punk band name. 

• From Dave Miss- "Fuck this shit up so we can give you a nickname" (the player is attempting to do something really hard, and everyone is just insulting them, and the nickname comes based on the task, or on the insults that emerge.)

Agreements: "Take care of yourself but push yourself. Help each other but hurt each other. Take care of me but push me."

Principles for how participant becomes creator: "The games I'm asking you to create will need a direction but not a destination. Think about what ifs, invitations. Minimal cheating is allowed, maximal cheating is encouraged. Competition in any game you create can be very useful, but winning can't be the goal of any game. Creation is the goal."

Silly Walk/Mirror: a standard game I use, and could be the whole day if the designers deem it so. These can be skipped today, or not.

Blind Movement Game Brainstorms: 

1. Close your eyes (and maybe your ears) and walk around the circle with one hand on it. We'll build out games out from that. 

2. The game "Prui" from Bernard de Koven (a version of blind tag, mild cheating allowed)

3. Blindfolded octopus-

4. Build out games from closed eyes

5. Think of Flatland, and what can be built out from there.

6. Sound travel: we sit with out eyes closed, imagine our journey here (or being somewhere) and make the sounds that we encountered along the way.

Terrain: thoughts on how to work with terrain

Chalk and Haiku: expanded exquisite corpse/moving writing intervals

Balance beam sentence composition: gotta work on this one, but you walk on a log, and say a word with each step.

New Meditation Games: previously, meditation games had been built out from playing with different focuses, alternating as participants ran, sat, and wrote. But I just took a transcendental meditation class, so it could built out from the internal repeating mantra.