In Transit
In Transit Co. Merrigong X – September 2019
A collaborative theatre work
An immersive experience
A community building initiative
The audience arrive, check in and trade tickets for boarding passes and hand luggage. They pass through security where scanners reveal them to be flawed, human … loved. They wait in a transit lounge for their gate to be called. They put on headphones that reveal the inner most thoughts of people sitting next to them. Stories, anecdotes and cautionary tales unfold – of travel, migration and survival, each told in a rich theatrical language of text, physical images, video and sound.
Credits
Co-Creator / Director
Michael Pigott
Co-Creator / Set / Costume
Katja Handt
Sound Design
Daryl Wallis
Video Design
Laura Turner
Stage Manager
Morag Mirankar
Performers / Devisors
Hernan Flores
Ryuichi Fujimura
Gemma Grey
Danielle King
Linda Luke
Laura Turner
Created in collaboration with Merrigong Theatre, The Illawarra Multicultural Services,The Drama Studio and Return Projects.
This project has received funds from Creative Partnerships Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund and was originally developed at Company B in 2008 with Megan Drury and Damien Ryan.
A Journey- Workshop Image- IMS 2019
In 2019 we turned the Wollongong Town Hall into an airport transit lounge for a performance that explored arrivals, departures and belonging. The piece was created by local and Sydney based artists and community members, through a series of development workshops throughout 2019. Further contribution in the form of stories, interviews, drawings and airport announcements in a variety of languages were created through a series of workshops run in collaboration with our community partner the Illawarra Multicultural Services.
In Transit began life as a research project into interconnectivity and air travel.
Creators Michael Pigott and Katja Handt distributed postcards at airports around the world asking for thoughts about being in transit. In the stories, poems and emails we received were a number of similar thematic ideas: A sense of displacement; a feeling of freedom from the everyday, and above all a desire to connect with others.
“Transit” has different connotations in the current socio- political climate. A ‘global office’ business woman sitting in LAX’s sparkling cathedral to commerce is in stark contrast to the ‘transit’ of Manus or a UNCHR camp on Bangladesh’s Myanmar border. The freedom of global movement of some sits uncomfortably next to the struggle of movement of others.
In Wollongong in September the transit lounge becomes a space for a conversation about what it means to depart, what it means to arrive and what it means to belong.
Michael Pigott and Katja Handt Interview with Elissa Blake – Audrey Journal
“Sometimes I feel like I am a lightbulb swinging in the ceiling. To me it is a feeling that most people have moving away from their country. Losing their roots, because they are not there anymore, so the roots that they used to have they cannot grow to great extent- the longer you are outside. And at the same time you put roots here or wherever you are, but they are not deep. They are from the floor up. So you feel like you are actually hanging there, suspended, swinging. Because you don’t belong, neither here, nor there.”
Hernan Flores - In Transit Interview- 2019
“We have stories from people who migrated here 40 years ago and people who arrived this February. The idea is to create a kind of conversation about what it means to leave somewhere and what it means to arrive and belong.” - Michael Pigott Audrey Journal