Circle Rules Football: Experimental Theater Meets Sports

NEW YORK ? On a sunny afternoon in Brooklyn?s Prospect Park, there are families enjoying picnics, and groups of friends playing soccer, cricket and Frisbee. In one corner of the park, there?s a bunch of 20-somethings playing with a yoga ball. A giant, bouncy yoga ball. One guy dribbles the ball until another kicks it out of his possession, sending it flying straight through a set of tall goal posts with no net.

?That?s seven to the Subjugates, four to Bunga Bunga,? yells out one player.

Another quickly scoops up the ball with one hand and tosses it to his teammate, who dribbles his way closer to the goal, taking care to stay outside the perimeter of tiny cones encircling the goal posts. Dodging around the other players, he hurls the ball at his teammate who dives into the inner circle to catch it, slamming into the ground a moment before the ball soars into his outstretched arms.

Wait, that?s a penalty! A player from the opposing team stands at the corner of the field with the yoga ball in front of him. In one quick, strange motion he hops up with both his legs together and kicks the ball with both his feet at the same time, sending it zooming back into the playing field. And the game is in motion once more.

It?s fine if you have no idea what?s going on. The sport is Circle Rules Football, and it?s only four years old.

Circle Rules, as it?s usually called, was invented in 2006 by Greg Manley, a student at the Experimental Theater Wing at New York University?s Tisch School of the Arts. For his Senior Independent Project ? equivalent to a thesis, but for actors ? Manley waved aside writing his own play or producing his own show like his classmates. Instead, he spent his time churning out ideas for the development of a new sport.

The project stemmed from his personal view that all sport is theater: dramatic, theatrical, viewed by an audience of millions. Based on this perception, Manley began to envision the foundation of an entirely new activity, one that highlighted the theatricality and drama inherent in all sports.

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Source: http://www.wired.com/playbook/2011/05/circle-rules-football/

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