Bjarke Pedersen: Becoming The Story

Studies have shown that if a person changes their physicality or is given a means to behave differently, such as putting on a costume, they change their behavior automatically in response. This is what happens with live action role playing (LARPing), where people take on character roles and physically act them out in fictional settings.

As the Creative Director of Odyssé and one of the world’s experts on LARPing, Bjarke Pedersen has spent many years exploring the power of this collaborative form of storytelling. He’s observed that by getting a chance to engage with different characters, LARPers are also able to learn more about themselves. LARPing is also particularly powerful for the ways in which it relies on building trust among people. Many individuals are able to tell their own stories within a given framework, but it is the larger output of so many different stories being told at the same time that makes LARPing so unique and powerful.