Because Xplore doesn’t aim to please, it instead demands something of you, with an alluring promise that you might experience something new. It’s a two-day rehearsal for a play party. Then that play party ought be fucking amazing right? If it requires more than just buying a ticket, dressing up spectacularly, and possibly standing in a queue for hours before being allowed to dig my teeth into the goodness.

For me, a play party is extraordinary if I meet the unknown. This typically occurs in three distinct ways: either I meet someone new, where everything is an exploration, or I witness something that shakes my world, or I get to spend enough quality time with someone dear that we inevitably evolve. All of them come with growth pains and require me to be brave. I want it to be unpredictable, but yet safe enough.

Of course, it’s much easier to just hang out with the people I already know, doing the things we always do. It’s social and nice. But it doesn’t require that leap of faith. And the effort needed to make that.

So, the structure of Xplore is designed to help you (and me). By scheduling workshops, but this time it isn’t traditional workshops aimed at teaching you something functional; instead, they are preparations or rehearsals for shifting your mindset to be brave. The “workshops” all conspire to create a shared choreography that we can later, at the play party, perform together.

This makes the play party very important. So it happens on the Sunday, all day, from 1 pm to 9 pm. For eight hours, it’s an ordinary working day. During the brightest hours of the day, for maximum exposure, when I’m required to be seen. Or, of course, I’m not required, but why go there, to a communal play space, if that isn’t the purpose? Or, at least some vague far-away dream? But it requires me to communicate my attraction and rejection clearly. It’s the radical opposite of hooking up with the last person standing on the dance floor just before closing. Again, it calls for bravery, and that’s why I love Xplore.

Compared to previous years of Xplore, this is so much more radical. In previous years, we had permanent play spaces to let out the excitement little by little; now I have to pent it up for the last day, like a massive edging session. In previous years, the workshops were more practical, so even if I didn’t attend the final party, I could still take something away to practice in the safety of my private bedroom. In the previous years, there was always something different to do if I didn’t want to participate in these pesky rehearsals. I was so much safer before!

And maybe this is why I love Xplore, because it challenges the status quo. And dares to ask the question, what a “festival” is. I hope you’ll take up the challenge, as we need you to continue this adventure. And hopefully, afterwards on Monday, you can tell me if you played with someone new? If something you witnessed shook your world? Or if you went deeper than ever before with someone you love? Because you deserve it.