Parsifal a Game Opera

Parsifal a Game Opera: Experiential Learning in Gameful Performance Art

Kortmann, Rens (TU Delft Policy Analysis)
Luijten, Arlon (Independent researcher)

Bottino, R. (editor)
Jeuring, Johan (editor)
Veltkamp, Remco (editor)

2016

Richard Wagner’s Parsifal was recently rewritten and performed as a‘game opera’.We used observations, questionnaires, and interviews to study howthe 700+ audience were facilitated to experientially learn about the show’s mainthemes: compassion and collaboration. This case study contributed to ourunderstanding how performance art may improve games for learning and trainingpurposes, many of which now are notoriously ‘boring’. We concluded thatperformance art’s main contribution, in particular to games discussing fundamentalvalues such as compassion, is to captivate players and ‘lure’ them intotheir natural behaviour. Thus the Parsifal game opera emotionally confronted itsaudience with their – callous and selfish – behaviour and intensified their learningthrough embodied experiences. However, some players lacked time and supportto (collectively) reflect on their experiences and lacked catharsis. Therefore, werecommend using gameful performance art for learning and training purposes,provided that all activities in experiential learning are sufficiently facilitated.

Real-life games
Performance arts
Interactive drama
Experiential learning
Informal learning
Game-based learning
Professional training

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:55cd1ca4-d85d-4ddd-b423-71940ea29769

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50182-6_14

Springer

978-3-319-50182-6

Proceedings of 5th International Conference, GALA 2016, LNCS 10056: Games and Learning Alliance, 10056

Games and Learning Alliance, 2016-12-05 → 2016-12-07, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands

Lecture notes in computer science, 10056

Post-print version

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2016 Rens Kortmann, Arlon Luijten