What else can games do?
Whether it’s around a table or in a park, we all have experience of playing games.
Following rules that tell us what to do, when and how, is a bit like choreography.
I am interested in how game formats can be a way to take part in choreographies, and how choreographic thinking can create different type of games that aren’t just about winning.
Works have been shown for adults and children at a number of play festivals and conferences in the UK and Europe including Tate Britain, Somerset House, the Wellcome Collection and Waltham Forest.
Open House (2013) is a short speech and movement score for 10-60 people. Using verbatim text from the national parliament it makes a game of the metaphors of political debates. If political speech is used to choreograph citizens, can that national choreography be danced by a small crowd? And how might that crowd take control? Performed at BELLYFLOP: Cue Positions (Toynbee Studios) and Dancin' Oxford Festival 2014 (Merton College, Oxford).
How Many Chairs to Build the Future? (2014) sits somewhere between choreography, sculpture, conversation and play. A simple set of rules turns 50 chairs into an environment for people of all ages to think and talk about big ideas in simple, physical ways.
“Saying words can have an effect on your physiology. Arranging chairs in a room according to a concept is obviously going to have a larger effect than merely uttering the word.”
Jonny Blamey
How Many Things to Build the Future? (2015) This is a collaborative game for two or more people playing together in one group. The game cards are used to select an abstract word (for example ‘future’ or ‘thought’) that the group must arrange some or all of the objects in response to. The cards also determine how the group works together (for example ‘work in silence’ or ‘think of it as a dance’). The rules are deliberately open so that players work together to deal with any uncertainty. At the end there are no winners or losers. Photo: Marcos Avlonitis.
“A great game to travel from words to images, to construct entire landscapes full of meaning with very simple elements, and to notice how creative processes work for you.”
Eva Recacha, choreographer
“A delicate piece of game design that allows for real and robust play around what we mean when we try and communicate.“
Hannah Nicklin, Theatre-maker and game designer/writer
“Highlights the power of play and creativity in problem solving, debating and exploring new intellectual territories. I see endless possibilities for how it might be used, and I look forward to experimenting with it in other contexts, such as teaching, in the rehearsal room and to pass the time with strangers on a slow train!”
Leo Burtin Creative Director, Talk with LEAP
A dance history game (2015) by Hamish MacPherson. How can we think about a history of dance that doesn’t begin with French ballet? Requires a six sided dice, a ten sided dice, and access to the internet or a library.
“A dance history game has a curious form of publicness, as it is freely available online and offered for a public audience, yet requires playing to come into being in physical form.”
Hetty Blades
Breastbeating (2016) by Hamish MacPherson. A card game simulating an after work session in the pub where the only thing you have to do is complain. Seven mini games use 45 cards to determine what to complain about and how. Play several games to accumulate points.
Living Spaces / Dead Spaces (2016) by Hamish MacPherson and Michael Such. A game about how we change spaces and spaces change us. For 8-20 players, around two hours play time. Requires two interconnected rooms filled with ordinary household objects (for example tables, chairs, blankets, boxes).
Winner on the Golden Cobra 2016 award for ‘Best use of somatic elements’
“When it is really humming we can see this game being a profound, physical and deeply symbolic play experience.”
Golden Cobra awards panel
“Living Spaces Dead Spaces is so great. So great! Really smart game. So aware of space and movement and physicality. So beautiful, wonderful use of movement, influence, stillness, etc. So much intricate somatic reasoning. Strong nomination for somatic. Uses simple fictional prompts to create intersecting choreography between living and the dead. Really want to see this in play. This game excites.”
Golden Cobra awards panel
A movement ontology game (2017) by Renee Carmichael and Hamish MacPherson. An online ‘game’ in which players make novel links between movement, choreography and dance. Published in Flee Immediately Issue 02: Dance and Code
Alien Phenomenology (2017) by Hamish MacPherson with Sarah Jury Nina Runa-Essendrop. In this larp, a silent encounter offers a brief window into the relationship between two or three beings, objects or sites. It might be about a healer and their patient, or two friends, perhaps one of those friends is not a human but a dog, or an ancient tree, or even an entire landscape. .
Let’s Play PMQs (2017) by Sarah Jury, Hamish MacPherson, Rosalie Schweiker. A Prime Ministers Questions (PMQs) live action role play set in the near future, when Britain has left the EU (sort of) and Theresa May is still PM. Photo: Sophie Mallet
“It is the kind of game that could be played on a stadium scale.”
Nicholas Minns
Active Maps (2018) by Sivan Rubenstein, Hamish MacPherson and Adam James. The live participatory performance is led by Sivan Rubinstein and features live music from Liran Donin. Participants travel around a giant map and use personal reflections to reshape it to reflect the constantly changing nature of the world.
