Au Jus — Bar of the Broken Hearted

"Your heart is broken.

tricksters, players and lovers on our side,
these days true hearts must hide
get your cover name at the door
and cloak yourself in little white lies
the bartender surely will have something to trade

you may stay at the bar and sip some gossip
or step behind the curtains to speak easy

tragic hearts in this world on fire
betray your lone desire
meld your private aches
into common senses

all the same, fear no bleed
we know you know

This is not a game.”

practical

The bar is based on principles of LARP (live action role play), a narrative game in which participants embody characters in a fictional scenario, enacted in the real world through collective improvisation. This nomadic LARP Bar is an easy-entry role play game with simple scores, allowing visitors to move between casual bar space and game mode.

</3 There will be guidance.
</3 No pressure to perform.
</3 Presence is partaking.
</3 Enter/exit any time.

Contribute your heartbreak story or song to the game's soundscape and research: contact_aujus@proton.me >>

about

au jus is a collective working with role play as collaborative research and practice. Based in a three-story building in Saint-Gilles, self-financed by its members and residents, it seeks to create conditions for artistic and para-academic experimentation as an (re)enactment of possible futures and potential histories. Coming to terms with the group dynamics and (un)conscious roles at play, the members of au jus use role play to experiment with their own mode of organizing. Hosting process-based and speculative practices from participatory performance, reading and writing groups, and prefigurative play, au jus invites visitors as collaborators to analyse existing structures and to rehearse alternative social scripts.
aujus.be/