Pretend Art School

Pretend Art School is a PRETEND GAME, running  October 18-23, 2021, online. For a pretend game you only need two things: some characters, and a scenario. Everyone gets to choose one (or more) characters that they want to play, and you figure out how those characters might interact together in a fun way, and then you act it out. At Pretend Art School, we’ll create a bunch of characters and scenarios and act them out together. The setting is an art school (obviously), but the characters and scenarios don’t have to be directly related to making, teaching or learning art. Within the basic structure of art school classes and studio hours and professors and scholarships and ‘the art world,’ you have complete freedom to invent whatever pleases you. The game includes a discussion forum for text-based play, and an online videoconferencing space, open 24/7 for the whole week, where we’ll have • Art classes: These will have set hours, assignments, a teacher, and curriculum. You can play as a teacher, a student, a government auditor checking that the curriculum complies to provincial standards… • Studio hours: Studios will be open at all hours and you can go there to work. Indigo will post set hours when they will be attending studio and working on their art. In studio you can focus on art-making and completing homework assignments, or you can play out scenarios like secret crush, teacher’s pet, gallery looking for up-and-coming artists to exploit… • Open Mic night (Thursday October 21, 6-7:30pm eastern): Everyone comes in character, some people sign up to pretend to perform. You can actually perform, pretend to perform, or play a clip of someone else performing and we’ll pretend it’s you. • Art Department party (Saturday Oct 23, 4-5:30pm eastern): It’s a pretend party, with specific party activities. If you’re a bit nervous about playing pretend games and you want a lot of structure, this is the best option for you. You can attend as many events as you like, and ignore everything you don’t want to do. The game also includes support from me, a self-appointed expert in pretending. I’ll help you find fun characters and scenarios to play out, and if you’ve forgotten how, I’ll give you tips to make your pretending feel really fun and juicy.