Nina Essendrop

w. Peter Schønemann Andreasen, Jesper Heebøll Arbjørn, Hedda Fich. Sanne Harder, Mathias Kromann Rode and Kristoffer Thurøe.

‘Before We Wake’ is a journey into the subconscious. By sharing and exploring your own dreams, you connect with your dream avatar, the Dream Envoy, while it tries to connect with you.

The idea behind ‘Before We Wake’ is to give the participants the experience of being submerged in a dream – but a dream which is shared, rather than individual. The scenario creates an alibi to talk about and examine your dreams. f each participant are weaved together, they form a communal dreamscape, which is inhabited by the Dream Envoys. 

Dream Envoys are the characters of the scenario, and in many ways, this is their story. Their assignment throughout the scenario is to find and eventually communicate a message to the player. What that message is, is improvised during the dream sequences. The title refers to the time limit they are working within: The duration of one night’s dreams.

In the game we utilise several different playing styles, such as physical, intuitive, interpretative, and dramatic. 

The game is divided into acts. Each act is followed by an intermezzo, where the Dream Envoy is reconnected with its player. As the acts progress, game mechanics will guide the Dream Envoys’ search for their message.

The genre of the game is surrealism. This is reflected through the setup of the stage through the use of light and sound as well as through the dreams and symbols that are used throughout the game.

The Theatre

Physically, the game is set in Københavns Musikteater, which is one of the larger blackbox theatres in Copenhagen. It is an ideal setting for this larp, as it gives us the possibility to employ effects which are normally only used in theatre production. Theatrical lights and sounds will influence the flow of the game, and in turn the players’ input will influence how the light and sound plays out. In a sense, light and sound become participants in their own right, as the interaction between players and effects is two sided.