Richard Wagner’s Parsifal was recently rewritten and performed as a‘game opera’.We used observations, questionnaires, and interviews to study howthe 700+ audience were facilitated to experientially learn about the show’s mainthemes: compassion and collaboration. This case study contributed to ourunderstanding how performance art may improve games for learning and trainingpurposes, many of which now are notoriously ‘boring’. We concluded thatperformance art’s main contribution, in particular to games discussing fundamentalvalues such as compassion, is to captivate players and ‘lure’ them intotheir natural behaviour. Thus the Parsifal game opera emotionally confronted itsaudience with their – callous and selfish – behaviour and intensified their learningthrough embodied experiences. However, some players lacked time and supportto (collectively) reflect on their experiences and lacked catharsis. Therefore, werecommend using gameful performance art for learning and training purposes,provided that all activities in experiential learning are sufficiently facilitated.@en

Theatrical art and games can mutually benefit each other. In a recent project we explored this proposition. On the one hand, we added game elements to a classical opera performance. The resulting ‘Parsifal the game’ was performed six times for altogether over 400 spectators/players. On the other hand, we investigated how user experiences in simulation games could benefit from an artistic space in which they are played. We studied how our production encouraged its plaudience (a conflation of the words players and audience) to experience and reflect upon themes such as compassion, sustainable societies, competition, and collaboration. From our work we derived lessons about how our blend of theatre and games may evolve into a new genre of interactive storytelling. Mainly, we learned that the performance had transformed from a space for passively digesting a story into a gameful event for active co-creation of embodied experiences and meaning. Artistic concepts and game-elements strengthened each other to create an immersive environment to experience challenges and pitfalls, but also to collaboratively design new futures. We aim to continue our journey and develop a framework for scientific and artistic research to further this new genre. In our talk we will discuss our expectations when we started our journey, the obstacles and rapids we encountered on our way, the resulting opera-game, and performances. Finally, we discuss future possibilities, challenges and pitfalls in developing this genre.@en

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.@en