MEMORIES

This is a page of memories, to share the pictures, videos and testimonies of the former participants.

A place for memories that mix, as dreams do, not knowing when one ends and the other begins.

Echoes of wonder, nightmare, fantasy and madness.

Floating... I'm floating in the dark, my eyes closed. There is no hesitation, my trust in my companions complete. I hear humming and chanting through the water and I feel weightless... Free.

Flying... Suspended in the air, hanging from the top of the hill. The night sky so incredibly clear and deep over my head, each star beautiful in its own way, just like us. The priest holds my face in his hands and soon I will be... Free.

Leaving... They are walking away from us. The play finished, the magic bargain sealed with gods, mermaids and the sailors of old. I am stuck here in the Republic while they walk away... Free.

JC

It is hard to describe the magic of Sirena to outsiders. Somehow the characters, the location and the 'play to flow' concept came together in a leisurely Mediterranean dream that felt very real at the time. We discussed life and love and dreams and sex and magic. We had parties and games that, a first for me, did not feel like we were playing at having a party.

We went into the wild to find materials to build crowns to crown ourselves kings. Mine was the crown of broken things. We tried and failed to initiate a pineapple. Everything made so much sense and it was warm and happy.

Maybe because it felt so real the inevitable tears in that idyllic community were not noticed by me for a long time. I did not want them to be there. When it was too late it all ended as passionately and tragic and chaotic and dreamlike as the game had been. I have never been so content to have a character end in such a depressing way. It fitted. She and the whole community were too beautiful to last for long.

Karijn van der Heij

I really fell into madness... and discovered and loved it. So much that I'm still in it. It's a pleasant place, indeed. Dark, brilliant, full of stars, ideas, love and... death. Eternal and joyful death, as that is what we searched to bring our souls to a climax. Yes, that was my (our) madness.

As The Magician, my life was intense. A double-sided view of life, the theatrical (faked, unreal) and the crazy (funny, magical, full of ghosts… and real). He will always be inside me. I enjoyed every minute, day and year of him. He started knowing that he was faking his madness, but ended in a group catharsis through a theatre play that brought us (the actors, writers and victims, we were all at the same time) to the eternal land of ideas. During the larp, he let me flow through the sun, the water, the wine, the madness of all of us... An unique experience.

Sometimes, at night, The Magician still whispers at me from that unknown and eternal land. And I miss him, and the sun, and my sisters and brothers of the Republic of the Free: Heart, Gothic, Shadow, Bird-speaker, Comrade, Voivode… All.