While I was working on one of my last feature docs, Veer, which is about the growing bike culture, I came across groups of adults enjoying youthful play activities. The groups were varied from mini-bike dance troupes to a “Monday Funday” of pickup kickball players. I realized there was a movement percolating and began to question the catalyst. These “kidults” (as I found some research had labeled them) ranged from late 20s to 50-somethings and were primarily comprised of millenials and gen-x’rs. Like the rise in movie goers and entertainment seekers, during the great depression, these kidults seems to be responding to the many social stressors of the time: continued wars in the middle east, recession and partisan bickering. The reasons and backgrounds for adults to recapture youthful play are as different as the players themselves. 
PictureSprockettes dance by bike!






















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Bobby, catching some air at a kickball game
Some like Bobby, work a corporate job and play on a rec kickball team as a hobby and source of release. While others, like Joey the Cat in SF, left behind a six figure advertising position to become the national skeeball champion and ultimately open his own skeeball rental company. Joey now hosts corporate skeeball events for some of the same companies he worked for as an ad exec. This doc is an ambitious project to discover and catalog the people, places and activities of this burgeoning subculture of play. A subculture that is already permeating the mainstream in the form of “geek culture” evidenced in superhero blockbusters and the rise of indie video and board games as well as many play based start ups. We have already begun production in Portland, Oregon and will be traveling to NY, SF and LA this summer and early fall 2014!