Pic Poc Poe – The Rite of Exit

Pic Poc Poe combined elements of children’s games with penitent rituals to form a darkly playful theatrical experience. Two players attempted to exit a room by negotiating a shifting pathway of leather tiles stamped with sections of Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. The tiles were arranged like dominoes, and each time a player stepped onto one they were required to recite the text it carried, producing a fragmented retelling of Poe’s ominous tale.

Strategy and performance overlapped in unpredictable ways. Some players pursued tactical exits while others played to the drama of the recitation. Loops, dead ends and sudden turns teased both performers and audiences, while Poe’s gothic imagery of sealed rooms, masquerade and inevitable death haunted the space.

The work was first staged in London at the Slade School of Art in 1997. In 1998 it toured ten ruined abbeys in Britain in collaboration with English Heritage, where the settings of crumbling stone, rain and wandering tourists gave the game an uncanny atmosphere. Later performances included The Rite of Exit at Conical Gallery, Melbourne in 2004 with Jason Maling and Torie Nimmervoll as players and sound design by Finn Robertson. According to its own mythology, the game is now played only on Friday the 13th.