[IED] Bus Stopping

What if the small terrible situations in and around London bus had a communal remedy of laughter and joy? Can we imagine an alternative world, where small issues in our lives had a cure that looked like a community singing motivational songs or a group of people suddenly changing characters? Will they manifest as absurd events or can we rethink our engagement within a community?

“Bus Stopping” is a co-op game workshop that gets you to think and act out the various ways to respond to small irritating situations on the bus.

This game workshop is about adding play to our everyday lives - thus having play as a way of being. The idea is to respond to situations with reactions that are absurd, break the monotony of life, disruptive and creative. The goal is to create a sense of joy among people and lighten the tension in this productivity-driven and logic-driven world. The responses can hence be absurd in nature. By using metaphors, personas and randomly assigned actions as inspiration, participants respond to such difficult situations - For example - getting late, in a hurry to use the toilet, forgetting the Oyster card, getting injured, etc.

Inspired by the FISH! Philosophy, the idea of a communal playful experience emerges out of creating alternate realities where people come together and playfully engage with each other, responding to situations. The game is a way of experimenting by adding playful reactions to minor inconveniences that occurred while travelling in London buses.

The participants would choose action cards to know how to respond to the situation card. For example, the action card says to sing a motivational song. The participants would then get together and discuss how they would respond to the situation. They can take 3-4 minutes to discuss. The participants would then act out the response to the situation through the action cards that they selected. The response should be no longer than 3-4 minutes. There would be 3-4 rounds of responding to the situations. The response of the actors would be filmed on camera.