12 PARSIFAL PLAYINGFIELDS
Arlon Luijten, Rens Kortmann, Bart Visser
Theatrical Installation Discussing Interactive Storytelling, Gameplay, Performance and Co-Creation, 2015
Parsifal Playingfields – The Garden is an theatrical installation that invites its audience to re ect upon the role of compassion and their own role in the transition towards a sustainable society. As part of the encompassing Parsifal Playingfields project, Parsifal Playingfield (The Garden) discusses a contemporary, transmedial adaptation of Wagner’s masterpiece Parsifal. It complements the other pillars in the Parsifal Playingfelds project: a theatrical adaptation of the original play (including an opera-game interpretation of part 2) and a flanking city game for inhabitants of the cities where the performance takes place. In 2014 and 2015, the Parsifal Playingfields project featured in the Rotterdam International Opera Festival. In 2016 the performance will serve as the opening act of this festival.
Using interactive, digital and analogue media, Parsifal Playingfields first fragments the original Wagner opera and second re-fragments it as a new form of theatrical and gameful storytelling that encourages co-creation of embodied experiences and meaning among the members in the audience. The makers aim to explore a whole new dimension of the existing practice and theory of theatrical storytelling, by leveraging upon the world of inter-disciplinary, transmedial games. The resulting new genre not just provides its audience with a means for analysis and contemplation, but also with a shared, mixed-reality space for design and development of stories and artefacts. It thus appeals to man’s abilities, instead of its inabilities and provides an attractive, positive, artistic environment for human engagement.