Ok, It’s a LARP, Who will I play?
You will be playing a Thespian, that is in turn playing a Role of one of the plays. We currently handle characters from these plays
- Romeo and Juliet
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Hamlet
- Twelfth Night
- The Tempest
- The Scottish Play
- The Taming of the Shrew
- Antony and Cleopatra
- Julius Caesar
- As You Like It
- Henry IV
- Henry V
Why only these plays? The total number of written thespians is 40, however we like to keep the casting options flexible, and also, we wanted to limit the number of plays so everyone could have a chance to enjoy the reading mechanic and to play some scenes with their fellow co-players.
What if I want a character from a play that is not listed there? Ask us about it once you’ve signed up and prepared your casting form; we’ll be more than happy to understand what experience you’re looking for and if that experience is new or if it is already in one of our written thespians, and whether you want to live it like that or differently because we also understand that some people have their own “favourite” character, like Beatrice or Mercutio, and they want to play them regardless of their experience. We try to accomodate everyone’s intents.
Gender in The Bard’s House
In the Bard’s House, characters in-play and off-play genders are not necessarily aligned. Again, when the character was initially conceived, they could have had a different gender or simply their gender can be changed with the course of history or culture that is reading the character. As an example of this, Conrad, from Much Ado About Nothing, has been played by actor Richard Clifford (1993, Brannagh’s version) and Niki Lindhome (2012, Whedon’s version), and the Act 1 scene 3 settings are very, very different.
Roles’s preparation
In The Bard’s Tale, we invite you to do the following for preparing your Roles
- Read the play, there are multiple sources of Shakespeare’s plays online and in free eBook format. For the game, we’ll provide a copy of the play where your role is set.
- If there are any available, watch some movies for different versions and performances, even on youtube, so you can get the flair of different ways of playing your character.
- Do a reading with your fellow players in the same play of the scenes that you share (we’ve chosen those characters because they do share scenes)
- Discuss how your Thespian sees other Roles or other Thespians
Costuming Guide
As we all know, all of our Roles and Thespians, in the end, come from the concept of Theatre, so choosing the clothing would depend on your producer. As you’re your character’s own producer, you can interpret this as “wear whatever you want to wear”, provided that it is adequate with your own character’s interpretation. You don’t have to match any other thespian’s style or colors. This actually makes for very beautiful scenes!
Temperatures in the Bard’s House usually range from 27 C to 10 C in the time of the year when the game is to be held.
This being said, as we’re describing throughout this guide, your Role can also be affected by outside influences. Further in the guide we’ll explain to you the reading mechanic, in which we will do some reading of the Bard’s plays that will include the Roles that players will have.
Remember that we go on theatrics, therefore, consider yourself how would your Role be expressed, see these options, for instance, all for Beatrice:
Two movies and two theatrical representations, four different approaches to express the same exact character. However, we are doing theatre, and we can pretty much set whatever tone we want.
We can choose to have a modern approach and just use “normal” clothing, or we can choose to wear period accurate clothing. In order to make life easier for each of our players, we will suggest options for each of the characters and players, based on how we see their characters so don’t be stressed about this, we are going to work this out together.
One base option would be “afternoon wedding dressing” for everyone, so open your wardrobe and pick that thing. We’ll give you options anyway.
However, living in The Bard’s House implies that your character can wear whatever they choose to wear, either based on the traits of their in-play (Role) and off-play (Thespian) personalities. Furthermore, you can choose any other clothing that fits your taste, from crazy Cyberpunk to period-accurate clothing. It’s your character.
How will casting happen?
One of the good things of running a small LARP is that we can get to know each other and chat about expectations and intents of the larp, however, this is an imperfect world and sometimes we can’t do this as we would have intended, or people are just not available to chat too much.
In order to have a fair system, we’ll have a casting form that will include multiple questions about larp expectations and relationships (inter-thespians) that you want to establish, as well as the plays that you are more aligned with so you can be comfortable. There’s even space for people that have never read Shakespeare!, so don’t be afraid about this.
Casting processes and announcements will be aligned with payment deadlines. People that get a spot will have their Thespians assigned before June 10th, 2025, and full character sheets available a little bit before July 30th, 2025. After that, we’ll start ramping up our Shakespeare to be ready for the runs!