A (Redundant) Rebelebration
This post is part of a series reflecting on my experiences attending Counterplay 2026. Check out the other posts here.
When I arrived at Counterplay, I arrived with a box of zines, zero knowledge of what Counterplay was about, and a plan: to stage a playful protest. Not a protest done playfully - a protest for play, against a world that increasingly doesn't make room for it. A rebelebration, if you will.
Look, my use of silly portmanteaus isn't going away any time soon so you may as well get used to it. But the idea is genuine. For the last nine months, the Play Team on Medicine Without Doctors has been making the case for playfulness across a sprawling interdisciplinary research project - arguing for it, demonstrating it, occasionally embodying it in ways that raised eyebrows. Counterplay felt like the right place to take that argument public. We figured a protest - colourful, handmade, unapologetically silly; something that looked like a demonstration but felt like a party - might work as a closing ceremony for the conference. This was supported by a stall where people could read more about the project and make miniature protest flags. The idea was inspired by artist-activist-nun Corita's Mary's Day processions at Immaculate Heart, where she turned a sombre, academic affair into a colourful, joyful procession. Corita's vision was to transform Mary's Day into a shared place of joy. What I didn't anticipate was how redundant the session would feel by the end of Counterplay.
Perhaps redundant is too strong a word. People came and made signs, and appeared to have fun doing so. In fact, what became apparent was the joy that came not from making signs that were directly relevant to play, but making playful signs - "Down with this sort of thing", "Signs are for losers" etc. "My sign is only little" is still one of my favourites.
Being at the end of a weekend of intense play, the energy - including mine - was relatively low. We came to a collective agreement that we didn't feel the need (or have the inclination) to strut our signs around town once they were made. Instead, the sign-making itself became the primary activity. That was, at least, until a couple of hours later, when people picked up their signs and staged an impromptu protest inside the conference itself. There was even a "Margot not MAGA" chant (another example of people playing along with my character of Margot). By not forcing the point earlier, players found a natural way of coming back to play with the idea of the rebelebration.
This reminded me of the importance of giving people space to make an activity their own, and of being aware of the energy when facilitating a play activity. But it also made me consider something else that I think played against what it was we were trying to achieve. Counterplay didn't need a playful protest - CounterPlay is a playful protest. By creating space for people - adults - to play, the event feels like a protest against normativity, against structures that stop us playing together. Consider how Corita describes the Mary's Day celebrations in Learning By Heart:
The function of such a day
is to provide a day of no functioning
a day of general feasting and rejoicing
a day of being with our friends
for one day to show ourselves
as a visible community
marked with extra colors
and extra sounds
a community playing
and singing
and worshipping
and feasting
after which we will go back to our work
refreshed and respirited.
Corita Kent, in Kent and Stewart, 2008, p. 183
In the context of a system that doesn't allow for this kind of behaviour, it's revolutionary. As a recent talk from the organisers behind Cabaret Against Hate Speech reminded me, rebellions come in all shapes, sizes, colours and dance styles. Staging a protest in favour of play at the end of a weekend where the delegation were invested in the importance and radical opportunities of play - where the whole conference, or festival, or whatever it was, was about exactly this - didn't feel like the poignant closing ceremony we initially planned. It was through the whole weekend that people connected on deeper, more human levels than we normally do; through days of "no functioning", extra colours and extra sounds, we became a community singing, dancing, eating and playing together.
We didn't stage a public protest outside to close out the festival. Instead, we shared a final meal, and sat by a river drinking beers and decompressing. As a group of people walked past on the other side, we waved, and they waved back - so we cheered, and one of their group started running around and dancing. As we cheered more, they danced more, until they decided they'd had enough and, waving goodbye, ran off with a huge grin on their face. Perhaps that's what a rebelebration really is - inspiring playfulness in each other, and giving each other the space to be our true playful selves.