Volunteers as monstrous workers: ‘monsters’ in UK live-action roleplay game organizations

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines volunteers as workers in the leisure activity of festival-scale UK live-action roleplaying. The descriptive term ‘monsters’ is native within the field, referring to volunteer roles often involving dramatic performance of a ‘villain’ as opposed to the roles played by paying player ‘characters’. The term highlights the paradoxical relationship between these ‘monsters’ and their consumption by the organization in order to produce its main ‘product’; the live-action roleplay (LARP) event. These volunteers do not clearly conform to a normative role as customer or employee, and they represent deviations in activity, identity, and morality. Yet this study indicates that the simultaneous production of organization and monstrosity in LARP conceals monsters’ role in the production of the LARP event as a conventional leisure activity. The paper suggests that conceptualizing volunteers as monstrous highlights their function and their potential for radical and different approaches to existing organization.