Community Building (Gabrielle)
(I apologize in advance for all the people who don’t understand this blog post. My brother Seth has been working on a game which is probably better understood as an improvosational play. If you are out of the loop and you want to know more about A Flower For Mara go here and read everything in this category.)
Last night we played Seth’s new game A Flower For Mara. It was beautiful. We played with Raquel, Seth and I, Jana who is a new friend and four other people I know on varying levels of a bit. I was excited to be playing with this particular group because they were all people I want to know better.
Seth told the group at the beginning to do the obvious. Often when you try to be clever you just end up being dumb, but if you do what seems to you as blindingly obvious it’ll sing more often than not. What I hadn’t realized is that seeing what someone thinks is obvious is a wonderful way to get to know him on an experience and assumption level. It’s hard to tell someone your assumptions because they aren’t things you think; they are things you assume without thinking. But when the characters were sitting around the table at the funeral dinner and one of them brought up the matter of family heirlooms that now needed to be divided up I could see where the player has come from and some things he’s had to deal with. It isn’t anything he would have thought to tell me in conversation. “Oh, and by the way, in my experience a funeral is the time for the rest of the family to squabble over the dead person’s stuff and I don’t like it.” It might have happened, but I think it’s unlikely. But now I know. I know him better. This happened with each of the players at different times. I found out a little or a lot more about them and what has gone into making them the way they are.
I was glad that everybody decided to trust each other with our sorrow. Sometimes trust is earned through a long process of giving a bit, seeing how someone deals with it and if he does well giving a bit more. Or sometimes trust is a decision. I decided to trust these people with some of my sorrow and I hoped they would trust me. When they did I tried to be gentle with their sorrow and I am very glad to say they were gentle with mine. And now the long process won’t take quite so long. We’ve taken the first three, four or five steps along the way.
Something else I noticed was our laughter. Some things were honestly humorous and some things were painfully funny. There was too much truth is some statements to take all at once so we would laugh together to get over the first bump of understanding. Sometimes laughter is almost as sacred as tears and it can bind together the same way.
Thank you, Seth, for being vulnerable enough to make this game. I know it hit close to home. Thank you to the group for a fine evening. I’m glad we had a chance to craft this experience together. I hope it blessed you as much as it did me.