Testing scores for performing placestories

This paper describes an experimental project conducted by artists/researchers Crab & Bee (Helen Billinghurst and Phil Smith). The project was put together in response to the Covid Lockdown restrictions during 2020 in the UK and drew upon an art and performance practice that had been unfolding since 2018. ‘Testing Scores for Performing Placestories’ describes the testing of a group of scores (with accompanying avatars, gameboards, narratives and images) for participants to perform in their own homes, for their effectivesss (or lack of it) in encouraging participants to make displaced performances by ‘fictioning’ with unhuman agents. The scores were based on narrative features of a terrain around the Tamar river system (a post-industrial landscape of former mining sites, ruined quays and hollow lanes, with a troubled ecology and a varied folklore) gathered by Crab & Bee during performative visits to these sites. The players were encouraged to use the games to immerse themselves, in displaced domestic settings, in the materials and folkloric revenant of the wounded terrain and then invited to respond to their experiences. The second half of the paper addresses what the 22 detailed responses from the participants reveal, and draws some provisional conclusions.