Christopher’s Birthday Picnic

A Vile Bodies Atelier LARP by Kate Conover and Orli Nativ

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.” – Julia Flyte, “Brideshead Revisited”

Inspired by Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books, “Christopher’s Birthday Picnic” is a structured memory larp about friendship, friction, and the intoxicating lies of nostalgia. About relationships forged and fouled and found and lost over the years between youth and adulthood. About a small group of disparate people brought together by one particular, charismatic, interesting friend; and whether that connection has any strength once the central bond is broken.

This larp plays out over a series of four movements. The first three are tightly structured to create a number of shared and individual memories; the last is freeform. The final movement is a simple get together with friends, like when we were very young. In which we discover what memory holds in the wake of World War II, and in which we remember our dear friend Christopher, who is dead.