#Larp “Bądź jaki bądź” (Be As You Are)

“Bądź jaki bądź” (Be As You Are) is a drama of manners inspired by grunge music and subculture. The game tells the story of a group of young adults facing problems common in those times in the Pacific Northwest of the United States — poverty, lack of prospects, cultural isolation. It is a story of resignation, of trying to find your own way to happiness, and of belonging to a community.

The larp does not recreate specific characters or historical events, but it draws heavily on source texts and the events that led to the rise of the grunge subculture. We want to show this movement truthfully, with its nuances and internal contradictions, without oversimplifying it into “a bunch of screaming kids”. The game materials include songs, graphics, poems and images by representatives of the subculture. Players do not need any additional knowledge — everything necessary is in the game materials.

The game will let you experience a slice of the everyday life of subculture members — what their daily life may have looked like and how they spent their free time at an ordinary Saturday party. It probably will not be the most groundbreaking evening of their lives, and the game itself does not foresee spectacular events introduced from the outside.

Grunge is a music style and subculture that emerged in the mid-1980s in Washington State and the area around Seattle. Grunge music draws on punk rock, heavy metal and indie rock — it is characterised by a heavily distorted electric guitar sound and greater attention to the message carried by the lyrics. The idea of grunge is also a rejection of the theatricality and exaggerated form of the glam rock bands popular in the 1980s, in favour of the substance of the message. The best-known representatives of the genre are the so-called “Big Four of Seattle”: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden.

The action of the larp takes place in Seattle in 1989, in a small club called The Central. Concerts for an audience of a dozen or so people, made up mostly of friends and members of other bands, were very common back then — and this is what happens in the larp.

This area of the United States was culturally isolated, very far from Los Angeles, where the well-known mainstream music was made — which is why the local music scene developed so strongly. The USA is entering a recession, and the generation raised by baby boomers realises that their adulthood will look completely different from their parents’: poor pay and massive unemployment after the affluence of the 1980s.

That is why the new generation also turns away from the culture of the 1980s — the polished songs about parties and a fast, easy, carefree life of plenty. That was not the reality of these people. Their everyday life was working on a fishing boat for pennies in the rainy Seattle weather. Grunge is called “the voice of Generation X”, also known in the USA as the “latchkey generation” — the generation of children who came home from school to an empty house.