Simple starts : The Maze
The maze game is included here in detail not so much for the game as for
its follow-on which converts the workspace into an `installation' piece of
sculpture.
Click for a map of the maze. It was originally made of wood, about three feet
long by four wide with raised walls.
Players used a long line to guide a
rubber mouse to the centre of the maze, collecting letters as they passed
over them.
It is impossible to succeed without picking up at least five
letters.
Whichever path is chosen a player always collects X at the middle.
When this is reached the player then makes a poem in which all the words
start with the letters collected - the X gives an eXtra letter of the player's
own choice.
The poems were usually small, but were then laid out on giant sheets of
paper, four feet square.
The poems were painted on, or the letters were cut
from wallpaper, wrapping paper, colour magazines or advertising posters
and pasted. Each of the poems had to fit inside one huge letter that filled
the paper. Each poem was mounted on a simple wooden frame. The frames
were lashed together to make another maze that filled the rest of the room.
On the last day of a week of workshops the maze was roofed over, extra
letters were added to the walls and the floor was divided as a board game.
Then everyone crawled through, using a dice to move square by square,
reading out the poem and collecting the letter they found every time they
had to stop. When they emerged at the other end, players chose one of the
letters they'd collected to start a word to add to a communal poem that
filled the wall at the end of the room.
For further information on similar games click on any listed under SIMPLE STARTS
in the INDEX side bar.
