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Pop Up Playground

This Is A Door tickets go on sale!

Written by Sayraphim

You can now purchase your This Is A Door tickets from the Theatreworks website. We are VERY excited about it!

We will be presenting games by
Pop Up Playground (Aus)
Shades of Play (Aus)
Coney (UK)
Fire Hazard (UK)
Obscure Games (USA)
Copenhagen Games Collective (DMK)
and many others

There will also be a number of playful engagement pieces from us as well as Nick Ilton’s Art Vending Machine and the whole event will be rounded off by a Playful Salon where interesting people will chat about play, games, their experiences and yours too. It’s going to be an awesome carnival, so book your tickets now!

This Is A Door

Sayraphim interviewed in Inpress

Written by Sayraphim

17 May, 2012
Cultural Cringe

 

There’s a certain level of responsibility resting on the shoulders of artist Sayraphim Lothian and her Pop Up Playground co-conspirators – writer Robert Reid and comic Ben McKenzie. You see if they get this wrong, it might be the end for a whole new art form before it even really gets off the ground here. No pressure folks. Lothian & Co have just wrapped up four weeks of workshopping their latest pervasive or social games in preparation for a three-day game festival, This Is A Door, at Theatreworks in July. The concept of pervasive gaming is still relatively new in Australia having only arrived when Tassos Stevens, a UK artist and director of Agency Of Coney, took a trip to Melbourne about a year ago. Read More

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Four workshops for This Is A Door

Written by Sayraphim

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… Read More

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Footage of our Melbourne International Comedy Festival show 2012

Written by Sayraphim

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.

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Pop Up Playground (Time Out interview)

Written by Sayraphim

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.Read More

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Expect the Unexpected

Written by Ben

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.

Melbourne International Comedy Festival, News,

Comedy Festival in full swing!

Written by Ben

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:

Read More

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Popping up in March and April!

Written by Ben

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!

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