we meet in the woods (a WIP)

an interactive theatre game exploring systems of co-creation and consensus building, beginning in a forest.

it is a game. it is a play. it is a story. it is also a bunch of people hanging out in the woods, praying it doesn’t rain. (or that it does.)

it is grown from a curiosity about the ways that forests intuitively self-organise to share resources, disperse information and respond to threats (amongst many other things). I’m interested in our existing human systems for collective care and co-creation, and asking how we might non-extractively fall into step with forests and other ecosystems around us to become softer / wilder / more instinctively generous.

read the project blogs below ︎︎︎

ALT: blog post by elinor lower published 14th March 2024. title: on pushing yourself. an image above the title shows a video game-style title "we meet in the woods: an interactive theatre game (WIP)"

ALT: blog post by elinor lower published 17th May 2024. title: prototyping wmitw. an image above the title shows a video game-style title "we meet in the woods: an interactive theatre game (WIP)"

play the prologue ︎︎︎

excerpted from blog post ‘prototyping wmitw’:

My ultimate narrative intention for the game is for it to be something that the players attempt (and succeed at) breaking.

But what is the moment where you first meet the game? Where you glimpse the palette of colours from which the game will draw?

I wanted to explore how I might make that first moment—the process of ‘onboarding’—as low-stress as possible. For it to feel within the comfort zone of anyone considering playing.

As a first draft of this, I’ve developed a playable prologue, which would perhaps be sent to a ticket-holder the week before they travel to play the game itself in person. Within it, you get a sense of the character you’ll be playing as, the world in which they exist, and a tease of the narrative ahead. It also presents some early-stage choices. Choices (at the moment) don’t necessarily shape the later game, but they colour in your personal protagonist. Not everyone will end with the same picture of the character in their head. It will depend on the options they pick.

You can play that here. (And if you do, please do leave feedback on the Google Form afterwards!)

first R&D supported by the Pervasive Media Studio’s Winter Residencies

ALT: overlaid on an image of a forest, text reads: "Elinor Lower is a Bristol-based writer, theatre-maker and participatory artist interested in how we are hyper-individualised as workers, citizens and humans. Elinor will develop we meet in the woods, a place-based multiplayer theatrical game exploring forest intelligence and the ways in which tactile technology such as vibration or sensors embedded in the landscape can make collaboration irresistible, and remind us of the parts of ourselves we have forgotten. Elinor says: “The idea stems from questions I’ve been needling at, about how we might create spaces for collective imagining/decision-making, weave ourselves back into natural spaces and become more porous to more-than-human intelligences. And crucially: how we might do this through stories, games, in ways that are ridiculous, active, fun. I hope to write some fictions, bodge some tactile technologies and invite people to come do some weird stuff together in the woods.”

ALT: screenshot of Watershed blog "Introducing our winter residency artists" from Jan 2023. Visible text reads: Following an open call for our Winter Residencies programme we’re excited to introduce our two recipient artists. Responding to the theme of Other Minds their work will harness forest intelligence - the understanding that forest ecosystems, like societies, are maintained by communication and a collective intelligence - and give voice to domestic machines. Watershed’s annual Winter Residencies programme is an opportunity for artists to develop incredible ideas at the Pervasive Media Studio, Watershed’s creative technologies research space. This year we sought work exploring intelligences that are different to human intelligence: animals, machines, or something stranger. We asked questions such as: What does it mean to live in a world filled with different forms of thought? How can we create an idea of humanness within computer networks, beehives, or forests, while still maintaining our essential humanity? And how can we use ideas like "artificial intelligence" to expand our understanding of the world, rather than creating new ways to exploit it? These are the kinds of questions we are thinking about, and we invited artists to bring their own.

actively seeking collaborators for future stages of development, particularly around sound design, radio broadcast and playtesting, so if it sounds like something you’d be into, please get in touch

elinor lower.

elinor lower.