Table-top games (board games, card games, tile games) are – like all games – based on rules. How much space is there for variation, interpretation or extensions? What, if games leave room for additional rules – or what happens, if rules contradict themselves?
Games are always representing a social reality in a smaller scale. Players become usually simultaneously performers and audience – and sometimes directors. Certain rules allow for some players to determine the course of the game, to set the rules. The mechanisms, that drive a game, are called “game engines”. What can performing arts practitioners learn from these game engines for their game, their playing, their performance creation? This workshop looks at the role of roles and rules in both games and performing arts, to reflect power, hierarchies, modes of decision making. It shows strategies to invent both table-top games as well as new methods for developing or creating performances, be it in dance, theater or other practices in the field of performing arts.
This workshop can be combined with “Board-Gamification of Space”, but touches entirely different issues and aspects around games.