A Theatre of Many Paths
The Application of Ergodic Literature to Performative Texts
by P. S. Macklin
A square of light unfolds in the floor. The roof space comes alive with soft illumination. A young woman climbs into the room. The loft light doesn’t work. She lights candles. A sea of cardboard boxes is scattered around her, their bold red lettering marked with arrows: This Way Up. The arrows point in every direction but.
- - -
A creation of this nature has no true origin. There is no single moment, no defining interaction or sudden epiphany. Instead, it is the culmination of innumerable threads—slowly, imperceptibly, entwining over time. Much like the fabled boiling frog, the transformation has been gradual, so much so that it is impossible to pinpoint when a story was first ensnared by Wayfinder—when it stopped being an idea and became something else entirely.
Every attempt to impose a linear structure on this research has been systematically rejected. Not by choice, but by necessity. The thesis itself resists form, refusing to be bound in a shape that would be inauthentic to its essence. This echoes Aarseth’s (1997) concept of ergodic literature, where the act of reading is itself a form of navigation, requiring effort beyond simple interpretation.¹ The text is alive, shifting, resisting passive consumption.¹
And yet, key threads remain. There are moments that anchor the work: a performance of 4:48 Psychosis at a local theatre in 2017; an experiment with play in a Thai secondary school in 2015; the first encounter with Fable, an RPG explored in a friend’s bedroom in 2004; perhaps even events that have yet to occur. These experiences—scattered across time—did not present themselves as significant at first. Their meaning was subversive, revealing itself only in hindsight. Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis (2000), for example, defies traditional structure, offering fragmented voices and discontinuous meaning, an influence deeply embedded in this research.²
This research has likely been unfolding far longer than I have been consciously aware. In this way, the nature of Wayfinder mirrors my own. I suspect that, like the theory itself, my life—everything that makes up its parts—is indivisible from it. That there are future versions of myself, too, already relevant and inextricable.
This brings me to Aristotle and Wilde: one argued that art imitates life (Poetics, 335 BCE); the other, that life imitates art (The Decay of Lying, 1889). I would go further—life is art, and art is life. The two are not separate but extensions of each other, feeding into one another in an endless recursion.³ It is for this reason that the format of this work is not simply an aesthetic or theoretical choice but an essential one.
Stories don’t follow straight lines.
Neither does memory.
Neither does grief.
Neither does play.
Wayfinder is the result of years of exploration—not just into theatre, game design, and storytelling, but into the ways we move through the world. The more I searched for a direct path, the more I realised I was always navigating by stars, sea, and wind—forces that are unpredictable, shifting, deeply personal.
This research is an experiment:
What happens when a script isn’t just a script, but a map?
What happens when actors aren’t just performers, but navigators?
You are the one anchored to one spot.
This thesis is moving through you.
The research sits at the intersection of theatre, ergodic literature, and interactivity—fields that break traditional storytelling apart and demand something more from the reader or performer. As Murray (1997) suggests, narratives in digital and interactive media are not passive experiences, but spaces of possibility, where the player (or actor) engages in co-authorship of meaning.⁶ Rather than following a script in a straight line, Wayfinder invites actors to assemble meaning—to build the text, rather than merely enact it.
To guide this journey, the project follows three thematic paths:
- Wind (Daughter) – Play and Navigation
In becoming a father over the course of this research, it has become clearer to me than it ever has in my time working with children, that play is about exploration - testing the limits, the boundaries of what is possible and what the "rules" allow. - Sea (Mother) – Meaning and Configuration
Over the course of this research, I have been navigating my way through the socially-accepted definition of mid-life, although I thoroughly believe that I am likely far closer to the end than I am to the beginning. This elevates existential questions, and encourages me to wonder how I configure meaning from all these strands of life that I have mounting up around me. - Stars (Grandmother) – Memory and Construction
Our mortality is central to, and pervasive in all aspects of life. In 2024 my nan, who had inspired me greatly as a writer and creative, who encouraged my ability to think tangentially, died. Wayfinder was written before hand, but it took on a whole new meaning once she passed and I was the one primarily searching through her belongings in the aftermath. Constructing a story of her life from the disparate stories and photographs was... hard. I would never know it all. I would never get it right. I was a co-creator in the shaping of her legacy.
These paths are more than poetic metaphors. They align with the ways we engage with theatre and co-creative storytelling.
Play is a tool for discovery.
Change is an experience.
Memory is an archive.⁷
This website is where everything is taken apart and examined. It is both an academic interrogation and an extension of creative artefact itself—one that asks the question:
What happens when a play is not just something you perform, but something you navigate, configure, and construct?
You have choices to make.
The answer is yours to find.
PATHS.
Which way will you go?
The Wind /
The Daughter
How does one navigate an artefact that has no predetermined order? How does play inform our interactions with the space we occupy?
The Sea /
The Mother
The act of meaning-making is an intimate act of play and emotionality. How are actors empowered to configure and co-create meaning in a creative setting?
The Stars /
The Grandmother
How are the disparate elements forged together to construct some sort of meaning? Can they be? Is it important that they are?
References
- 1. Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997..
- 2. Kane, Sarah. 4:48 Psychosis. London: Methuen Drama, 2000.
- 3. Aristotle. Poetics. 335 BCE.
Wilde, Oscar. The Decay of Lying. 1889.
- 4. Rancière, Jacques. The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso, 2009.
- 5. Lewis, David. We, the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994.
- 6. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.
- 7. Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
FOOTNOTES.
¹ In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal played what he believed to be the ultimate intellectual prank. His article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," was a deliberate hoax—an exercise in pure nonsense, written in the dense, jargon-heavy style of postmodernist critique. The journal Social Text published it without hesitation. Later, Sokal triumphantly revealed the ruse, claiming he had exposed the intellectual vacuity of postmodern thought. The implication was clear: if meaning could be so easily faked, then perhaps there had been no meaning there to begin with.
And yet, in its effort to be meaningless, Sokal’s paper became something else entirely. It became a performance. A reflection of the very theories it sought to dismantle. If life is meaningless, then to construct a text that deliberately embodies that meaninglessness is, in itself, deeply meaningful. The irony is almost too perfect: in attempting to mock the postmodern assertion that structure is arbitrary, Sokal proved that meaning is not bound by form. His hoax did not expose the absence of meaning in postmodernism—it merely confirmed its central premise.
The belief that structure and linearity are the arbiters of intellectual legitimacy is a fallacy as old as academia itself. To suggest that knowledge must be contained within a fixed and orderly sequence is to ignore the very way human thought functions. We do not experience life in a straight line. Our memories resist chronology; our grief does not unfold in neat, predictable stages; our understanding is shaped as much by the contradictions and detours as by the conclusions we reach. This is not an aberration—it is the essence of meaning-making itself.
And yet, traditional scholarship insists upon an artificial order. Our universities have long upheld rigid structures as the gold standard of intellectual pursuit. Such universities laid the groundwork for the expectation that intellectual rigour is synonymous with structural discipline. But what if that expectation is not only outdated but actively obstructive to deeper, progressive understanding?
