The Free Art Campaign

Live action roleplaying and using our imaginations for CHANGE!

When I was in high school, a lot of my community theatre friends were really into LARPing. LARPing, which they called Amtguard, was like a live-action DnD game. They’d pick a fantasy character - a bard or a mage or a healer or something - and, dressed in medieval garb, they’d take their foam swords and shields and go fight each other in a field.

I never got into it, since I’m not a big fighter and never got into the Renaissance Festival type scene, but I appreciated that it helped them hone their improvisational skills as actors and gave them a fun way to exercise. Sword fighting really takes a toll on your body when done for hours at a time.

I bring this up today because I went on a stroll through a local city park and saw a LARPing event. I’d seen the setup there before, but never went close enough to investigate, but the dog I was watching is curious and so was I. Something was different about this event, and I was somewhat shocked at what I saw.

At the park was what seemed to be a game of Capture the Flag, except all the children were wearing tactical style military gear and shooting one another with automatic rifle-style NERF guns. The youngest appeared to be about 7, and the older ones were in their late teens. It sounded like machine gun fire.

It felt like I was watching some twisted, pretend Hunger Games. All I could think to myself was, “Wow, that is violently American.”

I got out of there quickly.

I tried to sit back and think about what I was seeing, compared to the LARPing I knew as a teenager. I realized that these styles of live action roleplaying are, I guess, not all that different. Like a military battle reenactment, it’s still dressing up in a costume, wielding a weapon, and pretending to fight one another.

It is just another way to use your imagination to tell a story. It’s just that the story they’re choosing to tell in this situation is violent and could have bigger consequences. You know what they say: art imitates life imitates art, and with all of the gun violence in the news this year, from Uvalde and beyond, I was honestly shocked to see these children playing this way. Instead of riding their bikes and playing on the jungle gym, they were pretending to kill each other, and that seemed, well, wrong.

The town I grew up in doesn’t have a lot of creative outlets for young people. In fact, outside of school programs, there’s not much to do at all. Once you’re 21, you can drink, and besides hunting and other outdoorsy things… that’s about all there is to do. Drink and go fishing. Unless you’re willing to empty your bank account to one of the two private dance companies, you and your children have almost zero opportunity to get creative and engage with your community. The small theatre company I acted with in high school has long since disbanded, because the people here are just not interested in the arts.

Maybe they don’t get it. Maybe they think it’s weird. Maybe they’re afraid to be judged. Any way you put it, these small-town kids hardly have the opportunity to call themselves artists, and sometimes I doubt whether they’d even want to get creative.

However, they are interested in using their imaginations. It just seems that when left without the opportunity to make art, they might instead choose violence.

I wonder how we could channel those imaginations, not into some pretend battlefield that emulates one I hope they’ll never have to experience, but into telling a new story. What if instead of fighting, your LARPing event was a scavenger hunt, or a regular game of Capture the Flag without guns… or what the heck, put on a Shakespearean tragedy if you crave violence. In a country where you have the choice to be anyone you want to be - the land of the free, and all that - why would anyone choose to spend their free time putting their kids in a fake war?

I dream of a world where instead of guns, there were paintbrushes, and instead of a battle, it was a mural to create? I dream of a world where instead of tactical military gear, kids got to dress up in an up-cycled fashion show or participate in a silly costume contest like Halloween is every day. When I look back at my childhood, I’m so grateful to have had the chance to explore the anger and rage inside of me through art instead of fighting, but I know not everyone has that opportunity.

It sometimes requires money to make these things happen, of course, but you can start small with your own kids, or heck, do it with your friends. Lead by example, and you’ll be amazed at how the people around you will be inspired by your creativity and passion. This is America, the land of movie stars, rock stars, artists, innovators… and is a home to just about every culture in the world. You can be anyone, do anything, and learn from so many different people.

Why, then, is America so dedicated to this particular flavor of violence? Why do we take out our rage on other people instead of channeling it through something silly? Listen up, America: This is not the Hunger Games, and it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to look at the world through the lens of a militant superpower anymore and conquer everything and everyone. There’s no need for it anymore. The world is different now. Yes, historically, America was built on that very concept, but we don’t have to stay there.

Each one of us has a choice: keep hanging onto the old violence, or become someone new. By trying something different, and making art the norm over glorified gun violence, the rest of the world won’t laugh at us anymore, or feel sorry for us. We don’t need more soldiers. We can live in unity without fighting. The modern, first world we’ve created has grown beyond the need for killing each other for resources. Now all we need are more thinkers. More innovators. More lovers. More artists. More people willing to try with compassion, honesty, and love.

In 1780, one of our Founding Fathers John Adams once said, “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study painting and poetry, mathematics and philosophy.”

Why, then, are we passing the ideas of war on to our children, when they could learn to be and do and have so much more? Just something to think about.