A man lives constantly afraid his neighbour might misunderstand that one, untimely, sentence and expose him to the secret police. Each knock at his door might be the last one...

A political dissident lies in a cell, gagged and tied up. She doesn’t know how much time she has spent in the illegal detention center where she’s being tortured to reveal the identity of her accomplices. She needs time and the woman crying on the other side of the wall will break anyway, despite being innocent. She weakly breathes, opening her mouth…

A soldier knows that it’s his duty to use strength to restore the established order. Still, he fears reading through the Colonel’s’ orders…

A woman wields a stick while thinking of the life she is willing to take to protect her own house and family: she has already picked her personal convenience and survival. Picturing the widow and the orphans the man is going to leave behind, she rises her weapon…

A priest’s conscience writhes in pain, torn between faith and the Church interests. He prays God will give him strength…

Set in 1975, during Pinochet’s regime, DESAPARECIDOS is an historical larp about Chile’s forbidden memories, aiming to recover and tell what happened between the walls of Villa Grimaldi, a clandestine detention center on the outskirts of Santiago. For such end, the setting will mainly be a rural stone building reproducing the effect of a “casa cilena”.

Memory is going to be instrumental, not only in building the larp but also in enabling the players to discover the stories silenced by the regime, that were kept alive only by the personal tragedies of the families involved.

Players will experience how a totalitarianism can change everyday life, giving birth to a distorted routine, accepting basic human rights violations, where torture is not only a way to control and deal with all forms of democratic opposition, but especially a mean towards submission, to annihilate singular personality.

Dissidents, prisoners and their guards, as well as the religious and political figures who were involved with the regime, foreign dignitaries, and common people, will all be involved in the dramatic events of Villa Grimaldi. The purpose is to use the interpretative tool to explore the psychological point of view, the emotions, the impulses and interests laying behind the different figures involved in the routine of the detention center, where life is harsh for prisoners and almost luxurious for everyone else.

Through the means historically exploited by the regime, such as violence, torture, fear, abuse, players are going to experience themes such as conflict of conscience, ambition, personal gain and survival. DESAPARECIDOS will showcase how the violation of human rights brought a country to develop a social memory, through a cultural trauma made of personal tragedies.