nordiclarpyearbook2015

Being a Monk: And building a cathedral
- By Alexander “Gray” Orlov & Vasily “Jolaf” Zakharov
Быть Монахом (Being а Monk) was a larp
simulating the life of a Benedictine monastery
in the Pyrenees during the Holy Week
of 1202. The organizers were inspired not
only by history and art, but also by their
personal experience. The Duende larp held
in 2010 in the Urals, where this larp’s organizers
were players and part of the monastery
team, proved that the life in a monastery
could provide interesting play. Another
source of inspiration was the experience
of pilgrimage on the Spanish Way of Saint
James (Camino de Santiago). Thus an idea
of a larp about a monastery on a pilgrim
route was born.
Unity of place and time
The core idea of the larp was to:
Show the monastery structure as a hermetic
microcosm;
Make possible a unique and rich gameplay
on religious subjects which are seldom
touched;
Make the monastery represent a moment in
the history of the whole European religion;
the Church’s decline and crisis at the beginning
of the 13th century.
The larp was focused on the idea of an
individual within the structure, not on the
structure itself – that is why the larp is titled
Being a Monk, rather than, for instance,
“The Monastery”. The Middle Ages were
obsessed with the questions of essence and
existence, and the existential aspect was
crucial to the larp.
g
Why 1202? The idea of the Church on the
edge of change was an important issue for
us. The Franciscans and Dominicans were
just about to appear, but their presence in
the larp would make the answer too simple.
The question was where the Western Christian
world would go. Thus, the Benedictine
monastery became the symbol of the
Catholic Church, its inner problems – the
distemper of all Christians, and the participants’
answers defined the subsequent destiny
of the Church.
Why the Pyrenees? It was important that
the monastery was situated on a pilgrimage
route, and the Camino de Santiago was
chosen. Vivid Basque culture created another
plotline, throwing together Christians
and pagans.
j
A rose is a rose is a rose is a
rose
The key sources of inspiration were Umberto
Eco’s The Name of the Rose and
Postscript to The Name of the Rose. However,
the larp was based not on the books
themselves, but on their sources, on the
archetypal plots and conflicts. A monastery
(though in another region than Eco’s), theological
treatises, historical facts and legends,
Benedictine regulations – it all formed the
larp according to the spirit of the origin.
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