Hours Dreadful and Things Strange

Nonverbal dance larp inspired by the play Sleep No More (and Shakespeare's Macbeth) and the LARP Bjergtaget. Players portray humans in the grip of temptation, power, and obsession, or more/less-than-human malevolent supernatural forces – and it may not be easy to tell which is which.

Long Description

Have you seen the signs?

Clean off the blood. Put your blade away to rust. In the castle of Glamis, Scotland, everyone celebrates the return of the victorious war hero Macbeth, dancing until dawn to the newest jazz hits, toasting to a new era of stability – and hiding deadly ambitions and arcane promises. Townspeople going about their business in Gallow Green read omens in the ashes and the flight of birds – betrayal, chaos, madness – and do what they can to bar their doors and their minds.

And in the ancient woods outside the town –

– in the dark alleys and abandoned buildings –

– behind your dance partner's eyes –

– something is waiting.

Can you fight that darkness without falling to it – or is it already part of you?

Hours Dreadful and Things Strange is a nonverbal dance larp inspired by the play Sleep No More (itself based on Shakespeare's Macbeth and Alfred Hitchcock's films) and the LARP Bjergtaget. Players portray humans in the grip of temptation, power, and obsession, or more/less-than-human malevolent supernatural forces – and it may not be easy to tell which is which.

This is a nonverbal game where narrative and emotion are conveyed through movement/dance over a series of open-ended prompted scenes. Players do not need to have a background or experience in any particular style of dance, but should feel comfortable expressing themselves through movement around a space to music. Ballroom touch (hands, arms, back) will be the baseline expectation for touch in this game.

This game is aimed at any players who like the idea of a movement/dance larp focused on magic, temptation, control, obsession, and fear, as well as those who enjoyed the source material. No prior knowledge of Sleep No More or its sources is required to play this game, and while the characters all come from the play (with about half originating in Macbeth itself), the game contains non-canonical elements from the start and it is likely that the events of the game will diverge from the events of the play. Much of the music played in the game will stylistically resemble the music in the play (1930s jazz + Hitchcock film soundtracks), but none of the same music will be used.