Worlds in Play

📖Welcoming Sammy Stone to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest BURN THIS BOOK! 🔥 @sammygarammy Burn This Book is a short-form LARP about avarice, temptation, and the darkness within. You’ll play as a pre-written archetype in a traditional three act structure. It’s 1984. You’ve been invited to a private gathering at Marco Ferrari’s villa just outside Rome- yes, those Ferraris. Marco claims he’s found a book like no other, and he’s assembled a select group of experts near to his inner circle to see it for themselves. You’re one of them- respected in your field, and at the top of your game; you know others on the list too, big names, every single one. It certainly promises to be an interesting evening. #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #larp #storytelling #liveactionroleplay

🎲 Welcoming Risa Puno to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest UNRESOLVED RAGE GAME! 👾 @risapuno This interactive session is the first playtest of a character co-creation process for Unresolved Rage Game—a collaborative storytelling experience about rage, inspired by TTRPGs. While the full game is being developed specifically for Asian women and femmes, this workshop is open to people of all identities who would like to explore rage in community with others. Together, we’ll use mechanics from the game to examine how rage shows up in our own lives. As we shape the emotional frameworks of our characters, we’ll identify what we want to explore, shed, or reclaim in our own lives through play. #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #ttrpg #rage #character

🔥 Welcoming LaJuné McMillian to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest THE PORTALS KEEPER! 🌱 @lajunemcmillian123 The Portal’s Keeper - A Child’s Journey follows the journey of my inner child diving into an alternate reality through meditation and prayer. Particles radiate from my young avatar - an abstract representation of the energy we access and emit when we are able to move through the world freely. The piece is part of a larger body of work including performances and XR installations exploring themes of embodiment, inner child healing, spirituality, and liberation. The world unfurls into a blend of clouds, fractals, water and other natural elements. A visual representation of freedom in a fractalized universe. How would you move through the world if no limitations were placed on you, outside of space, time, and other constructs? #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #xr #healing #meditation

🌉 Welcoming Brandon Powers to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest THE BRIDGE: PLAYTESTING A DEMOCRACY RITUAL! 👓 The Bridge is a communal ritual that blends augmented reality, theatrical structure, and collaborative gameplay to guide participants from personal reflection to collective decision-making in order to create civic dialogue.  Using AR glasses, The Bridge combines the structure of a Socratic circle with the strategy of a board game. Participants respond to provocative prompts aloud, generating symbolic virtual objects anchored to physical blocks. As they speak, listen, and move through the space, they co-create a shared virtual environment shaped by their choices which evolves with each interaction.  #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #democracy #ar #xr #boardgame

🍽️ Welcoming Arlo Howard & Caro Murphy to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest DIG IN! 🏡 @arlo_howard @car0mur In Dig In, you play as a member of a family around the Thanksgiving dinner table. Every person at the table has a bone to pick with someone else, and conflicts will arise. Will you apologize, or dig in? #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #larp #dinner #family

🔮 Welcoming The Fourcast Lab to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest ENCOUNTER! 💻 @fourcastlab Encounter is a live-streaming media performance that is live, improvisational, and transmedia. This project constructs a game-like narrative architecture that gives rise to a replayable performance piece. Players remotely interact with an actor to tell a unique short story with each playthrough. Join The Fourcast Lab in this two-part generative workshop that includes an overview of the project with a generative writing/rehearsal.  We recruit. #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #transmedia #improvisation

☎️ Welcoming Angela Washko to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest THE COUNCIL IS IN SESSION! ⚖️ @angelawashko At a time of increasing public dissatisfaction with politicians and their ability to represent constituents in the United States, “The Council is in Session” is a tabletop roleplaying game and participatory improvisational performance experience created by Angela Washko. Played while seated around table outfitted with custom electronics, resin polyhedral dice sets made by the artist, and six different player booklets, “The Council is in Session” invites players to perform a scenario in which they are tasked with reimagining a community’s governance while responding to musical cues, instructional prompts, and finding new community and unlikely allies amidst a large scale catastrophe. #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #governance #improvisation #ttrpg #rpg

🎙️ Welcoming Alexander Devriendt of Ontroerend Goed to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest SUMMIT MONTICELLO! 💭 @ontroerend_goed The show has a memory — meaning our session will become part of a growing chain of performances. In Summit, I want to question how participation functions in theatre — or in any system, really. Together, we’ll try out a few scenes. Afterwards, I’d like to open a conversation. I often say I don’t like interactive theatre — or at least not the idea people tend to have when they hear that term. Where is participation a true invitation, and when does it become a necessity? This session is both a test and a dialogue. An exploration of what happens when we shift the balance of power between performer and spectator. #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay

🧑‍🚀Welcoming NovySan to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest SPACE WITHIN REACH! 🚀 Space Within Reach is a presentation that explores the practice of space analog simulation as a cross-disciplinary field at the intersection of Serious Games, performance studies, and experiential systems design. From Cold War-era war games to contemporary analog astronaut missions, space analogs have long served as essential environments for modeling the technical, psychological, and social dimensions of long-duration spaceflight. This talk traces the historical development of space analogs and examines their role as embodied simulations, improvisational performances, and training environments. Drawing on personal experience as a certified analog astronaut and educator, I present case studies from my own work, including the design of a custom Minecraft-based space analog mod that enables middle and high school students to engage with mission design, engineering problem-solving, and group survival under simulated extraterrestrial conditions. I also explore how virtual production methodologies—such as LED walls, real-time rendering, interactive physical computing, and spatial audio—are now being integrated into analog mission design to increase immersion and narrative fidelity. The presentation concludes with a look ahead to the World’s Biggest Analog (October 2025), a global, coordinated effort involving research teams conducting simultaneous planetary simulations. Space analogs are not only rehearsal spaces for spaceflight—they are performative, epistemic environments where we prototype the future of humanity in space. #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #astronaut #analogastronaut #space #spacetravel #minecraft

🚢 Welcoming Peter Flaherty to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest EMPIRE AT SEA and KILL, MY DARLINGS (SESSIONS 1 & 2)! 🔪 @peterxflaherty EMPIRE AT SEA Empire At Sea is a Solarpunk AR drama about a group of pioneering climate scientists who move to a remote oil rig for their summer sabbatical to attempt to create a sustainable city at sea. Halfway through the summer, the big one hits and wipes out the mainland. Unable to make contact with anyone, they must fend for themselves. We drop into the story five years later and meet Lani, our young female protagonist, on the morning she sees a boat on the horizon – the first boat or sign of civilization they have seen in five years. The drama centers on whether our group should allow the strangers aboard or repel them by force. This episodic, interactive drama speaks directly to the climate change generation with a thrilling father-daughter story that addresses themes of sustainability, inclusionary vs exclusionary principles, immigration, and multicultural communities. KILL, MY DARLINGS (SESSION 1) The brash, young founder of an ultra-hot tech company invites eight strangers to an island mansion for an exclusive weekend. The guests were early investors in his wellness wearable, Empathy™. He promised to divvy up the final shares of the company before the impending IPO as a bonus for their loyalty. Although introduced as strangers, their dark, intertwined pasts are revealed. Before dinner is over, the first of them turns up dead. Before the weekend is over, all but one will follow. This AI-interactive hybrid of film and game is the participatory entertainment that the next generation craves. With variable interactivity that adjusts based on the engagement of the participant, ranging from first-person agency to Friday night couch potato passivity, the high production value cinematic storytelling allows you to watch and live the movie simultaneously. In this murder mystery, you can’t tell where the film ends and the game begins.  #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #murdermystery #film #ai #ar #solarpunk

💪 Welcoming Alejandro Tey to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest ISLE OF SUGAR AND RISING TIDES! 🌊 ISLE OF SUGAR Join us for a stripped down playtest of The Isle of Sugar: a play that weaves in roleplaying elements to explore resistance to Castro’s rise to power. The audience will work together to create and play characters within the story, which is drawn from direct accounts of life in Cuba from 1959-1962. Audiences may find their characters marching along with Fidel Castro’s rebel youth, or working in clandestine counter-revolutionary operations- trying to survive and protect their family and loved ones while the world turns upside down. RISING TIDES An early playtest of a new card game/interactive play about wealth inequality for 4-6 players and two facilitators. Testing rules, experience, and takeaway. Includes a short debrief to offer feedback. #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #cuban #cubanrevolution #inequality

💫 Welcoming Katie Green to Worlds in Play 2025 to playtest DESIGNING FOR DEATH: PERSON-CENTERED EXPERIENCE DESIGN FOR THE END OF LIFE 💓 Explore the practice of using person-centered design to create meaningful immersive experiences for loved ones as a way of honoring them, creating lasting memories, and easing their transition. You may also choose to design an experience in preparation for your own death. #worldsinplay #worldsinplay2025 #theatre #game #agency #play #immersive #artistsatplay #deathwork #experiencedesign