Desaparecides
The year is 1977. A far-right military dictatorship has taken over Argentina and established a series of secret concentration camps throughout the major cities. All over the country, people are taken by soldiers on the bus, in their workplaces, from their beds in the middle of the night. Some of them will be released, battered and hollow-eyed, weeks or months later. The rest will never be heard from again. These people taken away without a formal arrest, charges or trial are known as desaparecides.
In the world of this larp, there is a magic in tango. Forbidden by the dictatorship, tango allows people who love and care for each other to dance together in a space beyond physical reality, no matter how far apart they may be.
Desaparecides is a dance larp that alternates between verbal scenes with partnered tango and nonverbal freeform dance scenes. Characters are either an ausente (one of the desaparecides) or a presente (someone whose loved one is a desaparecide.) Players will also play a side character one-third of the time who is the opposite of their main character (a presente if your main character is ausente or vice versa.)
No dancing ability is required to play. All players will receive a tango lesson so you know what to do. No knowledge of Argentine history is required, either. There will also be a history lesson.
This larp premiered at Make a Scene! 2024 in Minneapolis.
Content warnings: All players will play a character, either the main or the side, who experiences torture during the larp. As a player you will hear a list of descriptions of torture and decide which ones your character experiences, then react to them. No one, PC or NPC, will be playing a torturer. Each player chooses what parts of the day are experienced through imagination, abstract movement, or mimed movement.
The larp also has content warnings for state terrorism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, antisemitism, sexism, pregnancy, and tragic outcomes of pregnancy (most of these CWs vary by character.)
