Snusmumriken

The larp Kristianiabohemen took place this weekend, and it was good. No, - more than good. It was really really nice.

Everyone played historical characters. Some which we know alot about, and some which we don’t know much about at all. I played one of the less known ones: Lily Brun, a bourgeoise girl that Hans Jæger had been trying to liberate from the “chains of the bourgeoisie”. That way I could do pretty much whatever I wanted with the part, which was nice. What was mildly challenging for me, though, was to decide, as I went along, how much the character knew about the other people. After all, I know alot about several of them, but how much would a normal 21 year old girl know? While I have a book with all of Christian Krogh’s paintings, it’s hard to know how many of them miss Lilly Brun had actually seen. And while I myself know alot about Jæger’s personal life, chances are that the character didn’t know much about it at all. Have I read the books which everyone are talking about? The books in question were actually confiscated and not in public sale. Chances are that miss Brun hadn’t read any of them. I ended up winging it most of the time, somtimes knowing a bit more than I guess I should, as it made social interaction easier. It went quite well. It was a really fun setting to play timid and bougeoise.

To discuss marriage with Jæger was also really interesting, and he did a very good job trying to convince me that free love was the only solution, without ever mentioning anything straight forward, but talking about “urges that every man and woman experiences, even before the age of marriage.” He was amazingly subtle, and still I blushed.

I love when the border between myself and the part starts to blur, especially when the part is as different from myself as this one was. That happened this time. I actually blushed furiously when someone were mentioning masturbation.

At The first day of the larp several of the characters came from the theatre where they had seen Ibsen’s a doll’s house. Discussing that as if it was the first time I’d seen it felt weird. But to imagine that i had seen it as a young woman who most probably would be married within a year or so, without much formal education and still living in the house of my father, gave it all a new dimension. That detail gave me alot, as I knew the character would see Nora as the person she herself was likely to become.