Falling, Flowing, Following: A salmon story: Special issue on Theatre in Unexpected Places

This script follows the life cycle of a salmon, from its emergence as alevin in the gravel redds, to its smoltification as it turns silver and heads out to sea, before its eventual return to spawn and entangle with the river ecosystem. Falling, flowing and following offer different models for a narrated journey into unexpected places. The story was written by an interdisciplinary collective of scientists and artists, who conducted fieldwork at the River Spey in the summer of 2024. The script was performed in a theatre later that year and subsequently adapted as a short film. Then, in June 2025, the team returned to the North Sea to complete their own cycle. The story was performed at the shore at Cromarty during a community arts day of screenings, talks, craft and performance. Visitors walked together to the performance site, as one of the writers, David Overend, presented the text at a key transition point in the story. By re-locating the performance in this dynamic coastal environment, where salmon from many rivers come together in silvery shoals, the project explores how theatre can create new entanglements of communities, environments and animal migration routes. The text is presented here with a contextualising statement, footnotes to the relevant literature, and images from the event. The further re-location of the story to the pages of an academic journal echoes the salmon's outward journey into ever more expansive environments. Like the theatre that it informed, the narrative presented here explores the capacity of both art and science to reveal and celebrate the dynamic entanglements of life, land, and sea, exemplified by this iconic species.