We’ve just finished a month of Saturday workshops trying out some of the games we’ve created for This Is A Door. We had a blast and the feedback we got from the playtesters was invaluable for developing the games. Click through to have a look at the photos of some of the games we played… Continue reading
Footage of our Melbourne International Comedy Festival show 2012
So we’ve cut together one of the nights of our Comedy Festival game and uploaded it to share around. Check out the fun for yourself:
Mass Werewolf for MICF from popupplayers on Vimeo.
We’ve got heaps more games planned for the rest of this year, so if you’d like to be kept in the loop you can subscribe to our brand spankin’ new mailing list here.
Pop Up Playground review in The Pun (31 April 2012)
Pop Up Playground
31 March 2012 Barbara Welton
Violence! Voting! Vaginas! Tax collectors! All that – and some peculiar hats as well.
If you like your comedy on the interactive side, if you like the idea of comedians talking with you instead of merely at you, then Pop Up Playground is here for you. Take a walk up the stairs of the John Curtin Hotel and find yourself plunged into murder, mystery and the obviously difficult democratic process.
Pop Up Playground is a team of comics brave enough to let the audience decide the fate of characters and the course of the narrative. Emceed by the always erudite and quick-witted Ben McKenzie, the format appears to be only loosely scripted, allowing plenty of ad lib opportunity for performers and open conferring with audience members throughout the show. Continue reading
Pop Up Playground in Time Out (19 April 2012)
Pop Up Playground
Thu 19 Apr ,
Pop Up Playground launch their first adventure in pervasive game playing with a massive game of the parlour classic, Werewolf
First published on 25 Feb 2012. Updated on 20 Apr 2012.
According to Robert Reid, it started almost a year ago, last April, when Tassos Stevens from UK-based company Coney quietly slipped into Melbourne for a week of workshops, described at the time by Stevens as “challenges towards how to be a playful secret agent”.
“He basically introduced us to the kind of work Coney does – a form of pervasive games,” explains Reid. Continue reading
Expect the Unexpected
At this week’s Pop Up Playground for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Sarah Jones (Squeaky Clean Comedy) was the first member of the village council to be executed; after Alice Fraser was murdered, Brenna Courtney Glazebrook (More Than This) was next accused, but the audience who had cruelly taunted her during their investigations decided not to lynch her when it came to the vote. She died the next night, leaving Jack Druce (Introvert Def Jam) and Richard McKenzie (Dungeon Crawl) as the final suspects; the audience voted to lynch Jack, only to discover that he was innocent – and that Brenna, wounded by their cruelty, had killed herself and had her revenge on the bloodthirsty village by ensuring they would kill an honest man!
It’s these kinds of impossible-to-predict outcomes that make game so much fun – and we’re looking forward to another amazing game this Thursday night! See you there.
Comedy Festival in full swing!
Thanks to all our lovely audience who came along to the first Pop Up Playground public game at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival last Thursday! Our guest players were:
- Van Badham, playwright and author (vanbadham.com, @vanbadham)
- Morven Smith, comedian (One in a Million, @MorvSmith)
- Nicholas J Johnson, “Australia’s Honest Conman” (The Peer Revue, conman.com.au , @CountLustig)
- Paul Callaghan, writer and game designer and Pop Up Playground co-founder
- Richard McKenzie, comedian and improviser (Late Night Dungeon Crawl, A Sting in the Tale)
Popping up in March and April!
Welcome everyone to Pop Up Playground! We’ll post here about our games, events and play tests.
Yesterday we ran our first play test of our new game – a modification of Werewolf to incorporate performance to the crowd and team play. We played three times with a great group of volunteers – thanks all! After some great feedback from our initial play-through, we found our initial rules were pretty solid, though we have abandoned a couple of things which proved superfluous. Our second and third games went great, and we’re excited to bring it to the public – so excited we celebrated with ice-cream afterwards.
If we’re being a little coy with the details, it’s only because we want the game to be a surprise; this game will be our first public play experience, as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. If you can’t wait that long, you can also attend our free public trial show at 10 PM on March 7th at the Bella Union. Find out more details of the game on our Comedy Festival page!