From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia

Cycle Protocol

See also Immersion Protocol and The Healing Spiral (Participatory LARP) for related multi-iteration participatory works.

A six-day participatory LARP in which an ensemble inhabits a closed temporal loop and attempts, across six identical 24-hour cycles, to "break the cycle" — the central impossibility that structures Beach Surgery. Each participant is assigned a role (engineer, nurse, guide, witness) and receives a minimal script. Each day concludes with a symbolic reset: costumes redressed, props repositioned, the group's collective "memory" ceremonially wiped and restarted.

By the fifth and sixth loops, facilitation dissolves; participants improvise their actions against the immutable structure. The final loop breaks into silence. No explicit resolution is offered; the LARP does not conclude, only ceases.

Facilitators observe without intervening. Documentation is restricted: no photographs or audio recording during the event. A post-run debrief text is distributed weeks later^[1], treating the lived experience as radically ambiguous — whether participants enacted genuine recurrence, discovered subtle variation within repetition, or merely performed their own incompleteness.

See also

• The Healing Spiral (Participatory LARP)
• Immersion Protocol
• Empty World Meditations
• Eternal recurrence / breaking the cycle

References

1. ↑ Cycle Protocol Debrief Document (Anonymous Collective), 2019–present.