3 AM Forever – Juhana Pettersson

(Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen from the 2024 Tampere run of 3 AM Forever.)

The Orpheus Theatre celebrates the premiere of their latest play. As the night goes on, the influence of the fae grows and some of the party people will never be seen again.

The first in The Wild Hunt series of larps.

Runs:

The original two runs were played on the 12th and 13th of August, 2022, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The larp was rerun on the 9th of April, 2024, in Tampere, Finland.

Participants: 80

Duration: One night

Concept

The Orpheus Theatre is known for the hazy, unreal midnight celebrations following its premieres and productions. Actors, art students, derelicts, junkies, the stars of yesterday, and the promising talent of tomorrow all creep in for that sordid dance-floor magic, for the slow, horny chaos of drugged up 3 AM confusion. Emerging in the early hours, steeped in bizarre regrets and haunting memories, you wonder whether everything really happened.

There are plenty of rumours that strange tragedies follow people at these parties, and that being involved in the theatre’s productions is dangerous. Few bother to see the shows – small weird affairs with short runs, and bizarre, haunting imagery. They come for the parties

There is a reason why The Orpheus is too strange to succeed, yet pulls in the hungry, the lonely, and the yearning. The fae lurk in the shadows, eager to touch the reality and spark of a human being. Eager to be changed by it. The fae feed every ambition and creative impulse, no matter how dangerous or self-destructive. For the faeries at their eternal party, there is no beauty as striking as that of human desperation.

Dance, human. Dance at the risk of having to dance for ever.

3 AM Forever is a larp set at the party following a premiere at The Orpheus. In the hours from when the show ends to the end of the night, you will lose yourself in your dreams, stumbling out as both less and more than what you were before. The memories of what you did might fill you with dread but you’d do it all over again.