Professor Barrington,

Hah! 

To be fair, you've got to see the irony of writing my thesis in a linear manner. 

You’ll find the (current) outline attached. It's been through several revisions already.

Chapter One: Introduction
1.1: Framing the Research
1.2: Disclaiming Objectivity
1.3: A Note on the Author (or lack thereof)

Chapter Two: Literature Review
2.1: The Wind and Where It Decided To Go 1.1: The Wind
2.2: The Sea and the Spine – The Living Theatre 1.2: The Sea
2.3: The Stars and What is In Between Them – Kane, Churchill, Stephens. 1.3 : The Stars

Chapter Three: Methodology
3.1: Navigation / Configuration / Construction
3.2: The Role of the Performer as Reader
3.3: On Meaning Without Intention

Chapter Four: Analysis
4.1: Case Study: Rehearsal as Discovery
4.2: Affordances of the box
4.3: Patterns of Loop and Drift
4.4: “This Is the Map”: Toward a New Vocabulary
4.5: The Memories of a Dead Author

Chapter Five: Conclusion
5.1: Tired Paths, New Routes
5.2: On Wayfinding
5.3: Things We Leave Behind

If anything stands out, do let me know. I’m still charting the course.

Regards,
E.Z.

Professor Barrington,

Thanks for the note. I am managing, just about—though “managing” these days mostly means “snatching at hours between episodes of Bluey and Paddington Bear.”

I’ve nearly completed a rough draft of my first chapter. It’s... skeletal but taking shape.

Quinlan’s piece sounds interesting. I’m not familiar with it, but I’ve just requested it through the library. You’re right, I suppose repetition as navigation is very close to what I’m working with. If you come across anything else with that kind of slant, I'd be grateful if you could send it my way.

Regards,
E.Z.

Professor Barrington,

I’m not asking you to see anything. Only to look.

Eliza.

Professor Barrington,

Yes, definitely a box. Definitely real. A shoebox. Wayfinder brand. You know, the ones with the cheesy ads from the 80s? Red. Size 9½. The shoes are nowhere to be seen.

I’m attaching the catalogue-in-progress, if you’re curious.

E.Z.

Professor Barrington,

I appreciate the pivot. And you’re right—if it’s going to hold up, the methodology needs to be as clear as the theory.

The box—well, I’ll get to that in a moment. But first: structure.

The research involves a series of rehearsals structured around ergodic principles. The process unfolds in three parts:

Navigation: Performers are presented with the box (or as per my initial approach - environment) and asked, or simply allowed the time to explore its contents without instruction. They make choices—what to engage with, what to ignore, what order to approach things. The order of encounter becomes the first layer of meaning. 

Configuration: From this encounter, they begin to group, associate, and sequence material. This can be verbal, physical, spatial, emotional. No script, but patterns emerge. The performers begin developing an internal logic—a system that could well be unique to them and the chemistry between them. I watch how that system forms.

Construction: Over time, the fragments are used to create a short piece of performance. Not polished. Not final. But coherent in its own way. What I’m analysing is not necessarily the outcome (although I am fascinated to see that, too), but the process— the moment where the performers begin to feel or make meaning— not because a linear story is unfolding and a plot beat tells them too, but because emotional, thematic, or symbolic connections are emerging between or from fragments.

Each session is audio recorded, transcribed, and annotated. I’m also tracking decision pathways, performer commentary, and emergent patterns of interpretation. I’m less interested in what’s “performed” and more interested in how the structure functions: what choices recur, what meanings are shared, what gets discarded and why.

As for the box—I hesitate to describe it in detail because I’m not entirely sure description would serve it well. It’s not the contents that matter, so much as the way those contents behave in relation to one another. And to the meaning found in those contents and the relations between them.

Some of it is visual. Some tactile. There are fragments of written text—short, potentially performable segments without fixed roles or order. There are images, items that could be used as props - I'm still in the process of cataloguing them.

It’s part document, part device. Not a script. But not improvisation either. Something in between. A fragmented text, made spatial. A kind of three-dimensional score. The performers don’t know that, of course. They just open the box and begin.

- The box contains memory in its non-linear state — raw, affective, unordered.
- The performer (or user, or scholar, or character) selects, interprets, and re-presents.
- In doing so, they clean, sequence, rationalise — and in the process, change the memory.

So every staging is:

- A different arrangement of memories (because of choice and order),
- A different truth (because of selection bias and performative emphasis),
- A different identity (because memory defines the person constructing the story),
- And a performance of the lie that memory tells in trying to make sense.

What I’m really doing, I suppose, is building a system. One where a fixed script is replaced by responsive coordinates. Where story isn’t passed down, but located—through interaction, through movement, through impulse. It’s not directionless. It’s just navigated differently every time. It's a self-guided tour through New York city streets. Or wayfinding... yes, wayfinding on the open ocean with only the wind, sea, and stars to guide you. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about how art and life feed each other. There’s that old line—Plato said art imitates life, Wilde said life imitates art. But maybe the truth is that they’re not mirrors at all. Maybe they’re the same river, just viewed from different banks. The structure I’m building isn’t an imitation. It’s an enactment. It’s theatre that behaves like life.

Hope that gives you something to chew on.

Regards,
E.Z.

Professor Barrington,

Thank you for your reply. I’ll keep this one focused.

You asked what I’m trying to prove. So here it is:

Hypothesis: Meaning in performance can be generated through structured navigation rather than linear narrative. The rules of coherence, clarity, and closure that underpin Western narrative systems are not universal, and alternative models - rooted in ergodic functionality - can produce equally meaningful experiences when framed and rehearsed intentionally.

Research Aims:

To test whether ergodic principles (navigation, configuration, construction) can be translated from digital/literary spaces into rehearsal and live performance.

To develop a repeatable, adaptable framework - Polygodic Performance - for actor-led meaning-making using curated, multimedial, non-linear artefacts that retain thematic elements of authorial intent. 

To explore whether such a performative artefact can be felt, understood, or intuited through movement, proximity, resonance - not just a scripted blueprint. 

I know you don’t like the phrase “non-linear narrative.” But narrative isn’t married to chronology. The Cambridge definition, “a story or a description of a series of events”, says nothing about order. Linearity is one tradition. The dominant one, yes. But not the only one.

And it’s not neutral. It’s baked into capitalist structure, into commercial pacing, into what sells. Into what feels safe. It’s designed to satisfy a particular demographic: legible, resolvable, and comfortable. 

You mention the "spine" of a story. Well, not all living things have spines, but they're equally valid life forms. 95% of life on earth is invertebrate. Creatures that move differently. Adapt differently. Even before you take into consideration sex and race and creed and culture - there are unseen differences in us all. Differences in how we think. I'm just saying maybe story doesn’t always need bones. Sometimes it pulses. Sometimes it drifts. Exploring "narradivergent" possibilities is important for the 95% of us who don't have spines.

And yes, this is personal. I’m raising a child in a world that flattens everything for convenience. That rewards repetition, productivity, legibility. That churns out cookie-cutter film templates, sequels and reboots galore. That distrusts anything that doesn’t resolve. I don’t want to train her to make herself easier to understand. I want to understand the systems that decided she was complicated in the first place. And most importantly - I want her to be her. 

This isn’t a rejection of story. It’s a refusal to pretend that all stories are built the same.

Regards,
E.Z.

And it's Elizabeth.

Regards,
E.Z.

The Ph.D. was planned. The child was not.

Regards,
E.Z.

Dear Professor Barrington,

Sorry for the slow response - parenting got the best of me this week.

Thank you for your honesty, and for signing off on the ethical approval form. It's appreciated. I’m under no illusion that my project fits neatly within your field, but I appreciate your attention nonetheless.

You asked why you. It’s a fair question. Truthfully, I’ve reached out to a handful of people, Aarseth, briefly, and one or two practitioners, but I keep coming back to narratology. Because no matter how the form shifts into movement, space, or interaction, the question of how meaning travels is still narrative. Or at least, it’s deeply entangled with it. And for better or worse, that brings me to you.

The gap, as I see it, is this. We have a rich vocabulary for analysing the linear, the intentional, the structured. We know how to talk about coherence. But we’re less confident when those structures are fragmented from the outset, not because of collapse, but by design (Eco, 1989). And even less so when that fragmentation is activated live, by other people, in a space.

Ludology has developed its own language to discuss these principles in the digital - borrowing heavily from the ideas Aarseth and Murray set out. Immersology has provided some vocabulary to discuss non-linear phenomenons in a performative space, but they're largely focussed on audience appreciation and end-product performance. My approach with Polygodic Performance is the idea of sitting in-between these spaces and developing the language that allows us to describe effective non-linear structures in performative creation. As Sarah Kane set out to do - to marry form and content - not so that the form is "carrying the content" but so that the form *is* the content. So that we can tackle inherently non-linear ideas like grief, memory and even life itself. It becomes a testing ground for proving that ergodic theory can meaningfully alter how we construct, perceive, and experience meaning-making within performative texts, not just digital ones.

There’s a slippage there, between story and structure, between authorship and invitation. And that’s where I think the interesting work is. What happens when we allow navigation, not as a metaphor, but as a practice, to become part of how meaning is built? Aarseth (1997) defines this kind of navigation as a non-trivial effort. It changes how a text is experienced, not just interpreted. What does rehearsal look like when you don’t begin with a story, but with a box?

I should say I’m not trying to abandon structure. I’m trying to build one. One that reflects how memory and emotion actually behave, non-linear, fragmented, deeply contextual. One that still has rules, just not the ones we’re used to.

The models we tend to inherit around narrative, closure, coherence, progression, are often rooted in Western storytelling traditions that prioritise clarity, control, and productivity. But as Ong (1982) and Goody (1977) point out, there are other ways of telling. In many oral cultures, stories repeat, adapt, remain open. They leave room for ambiguity, for silence.

I’m not throwing everything out. I’m just asking if a different rulebook might be possible, one grounded in ergodic functionality, shaped for performance, and capable of making space for the kinds of meaning that don’t sit neatly inside arcs.

I don’t expect you to have the answers. But your clarity in defending structure makes you a useful opponent. If I can make a case that lands with you - or at least withstands your skepticism - then I’ll know I’ve made one at all.

Regards,
E.Z.

Dear Professor Barrington,

Thanks so much. Please find attached the approval form. It’s straightforward - just a signature and date to confirm you’re happy to be quoted if needed. When I started out, I reached out to Aarseth and forgot to get him to sign one of these and I haven't been able to reach him since!

No rush at all.

Regards,
E.Z.

Dear Professor Barrington,

Thank you for your response and for engaging with more patience than I suspect my pitch deserved. I appreciate your honesty. You’re right to question it.

You mentioned Aarseth, and I’d like to pick that thread up briefly. My original interest in ergodic theory came from its demand for non-trivial effort in navigating a text. In theatre, the audience rarely has that kind of agency, but performers might. Aarseth’s triad of navigation, configuration, and construction stuck with me, and I’ve been trying to think through how those terms could apply in a rehearsal room, not just a reading space.

I’m also aware that this puts me on a path already walked—Sarah Kane, Simon Stephens, even Caryl Churchill to a degree. But while their texts bend form to evoke emotion, mine begins without one. Or at least, with no fixed order. I’m not developing a playtext. I’m curating something performable that doesn’t rely on a narrative spine. I suspect this is where you and I part ways.

Still, I’m not doing this to be obscure. I’m trying to understand whether resonance can hold the same kind of weight as resolution. And if meaning can be built not through structure, but through the choices that orbit it.

I’ve been reading a few theorists who’ve helped shape how I’m approaching this:

• Umberto Eco talks about “open works”, art that doesn’t lock meaning in place, but invites the reader or viewer to bring it to life through how they engage with it.

• N. Katherine Hayles argues that the form of a work (how it’s made, what medium it’s in) is just as important as the story it tells. Meaning comes from how something is experienced, not just what it says.

• Marie-Laure Ryan looks at how stories play out across different media. She reminds us that not all narratives follow the same rules, especially when they move beyond books or scripts.

• Danielewski’s House of Leaves showed me how a story could be navigated like a space. It’s a novel, but it reads like a place you get lost in. The form becomes part of the story.

• Barthes gave us the “death of the author”—the idea that readers make meaning, not just writers. That stuck with me when thinking about performers as meaning-makers.

• Janet Murray writes about how people can help shape stories as they go—especially in interactive media. That’s what I want to explore in performance: not just interpreting, but constructing.

I’ll read Function, Form, and Fidelity—thank you for the recommendation. And good luck with the move. I hope the new place has windows.

Regards,
E.Z.

P.P.S. I’m starting to think this correspondence might end up providing me with more material than I perhaps anticipated. Would you be comfortable with me sending over an ethical approval form? Just in case I want to quote you later. No pressure at all—just want to make sure I’m not bending any boundaries.

Professor Barrington,

I hope this email finds you well. I am currently pursuing doctoral research under Professor Aubrey E. Hill at Daden Hall University, investigating ergodic literature and its potential applications within theatrical contexts, specifically, in the realm of performative text and actor-centred rehearsal processes.

To provide you with some context, I had initially considered developing an escape room-inspired environment populated with script fragments that invited actors to actively navigate, configure, and construct the "performance script". It was inspired and initially informed jointly by Aarseth’s 'Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature' (1997), and Mark Z. Danielewski's 'House of Leaves (2000) specifically the concepts of non-trivial effort and reader/player navigation.

But then came the box. And it got me thinking about the non-linearity of memory and the storytelling of memory. So, although the escape-room inspired space would be the ultimate realisation of my theory, I believe that a box would be an adequate case study for the purposes of this thesis. Especially from a financial point of view.

Anyway, all this to say that yesterday I discovered your thesis, 'Narrative as Engine: The Structural Integrity in Effective Texts' (1998), and I am not ashamed to say I was up all night reading it.

I particularly found your critiques of structural integrity within narrative forms intriguing; they provide an essential counterbalance to my own explorations, it's safe to say that we disagree on much, but I do enjoy the challenge of reconciling opposing ideas. For some reason I find ideological challenges much better for clarity than affirming platitudes. This has prompted me to reach out. Given your expertise and your advocacy for structured clarity, your perspective would be invaluable as I navigate the theoretical complexities this artefact presents. Your process for bringing narrative structure to an item of this nature could provide a fascinating fold to my own.

Might you be open to a brief dialogue about how structured narrative principles could interact productively with what is essentially an ergodic artefact? Truthfully, any insights or initial guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you kindly for your time and consideration. I look forward to your thoughts.

Regards,
E.Z.

*You must forgive me for referencing in-email. I have found the habit invaluable for organising my citations at a later date.

P.S. I was particularly interested in your arguments regarding closure, I would love to further discuss your position on the migration of closure to post-experience in non-linear narratives.