Jessica Wilson and Ian Pidd
Passenger is a theatre work, which places its audience inside a moving suburban bus. A conversation is heard between two fellow passengers and—as we gaze at the passing world outside—we are seduced into an altered understanding of the environment around us.
Dates 27 February – 8 March 2020
Location Meet at the BUS STOP on west side of Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont, Sydney NSW 2009
Exploring our relationship to screen media and how it influences our interpretation of the world, Passenger framed Melbourne’s Docklands as a filmic landscape. It is the frontier of a market-driven economy – and the perfect setting for a modern-day Western.
Passenger references Western films where the cowboy seeks to ‘right’ a ‘wrong’ that the law cannot rectify. In a familiar conversational style, two strangers discuss the ethics of contemporary life before the female reveals her true identity and her seeking of retribution.
The audience, engaged in a heightened ‘searching’ in the outside landscape as it passes by, are suddenly surrounded by a full filmic experience framed by the windows of the bus and an epic original soundtrack.
This is an intriguing theatrical experience which leaves its audience tingling and alert.
Up to 40 passengers journey on a suburban bus for each 1 hour experience which picks them up and leaves them at the same location. Passenger is able to be mounted in any city location and particularly suits financial-like districts.
“magnificently surreal and gloriously cinematic…. a tightly written and brilliantly executed piece that turns the London landscape into a thriller movie, framing the city so that we see it with the eye of a cinematographer.” — Dorothy Max Prior, Total Theatre UK
“Passenger transports you into a parallel reality that transforms the normalcy of a home city into a thronging surreal cinema-scape that is part Truman show, part Western Noir.” — Raphael Solarsh, ArtsHub
“a final sequence so spectacular it seems almost unreal that you are witnessing it live.” — Nikki Spunde, Australian Stage
Concept / Story Jessica Wilson, Ian Pidd
Writer Nicola Gunn
Direction Jessica Wilson, Ian Pidd
Original Composition Tom Fitzgerald
Lead Performers Jim Russell, Beth Buchanan (Melbourne) / Victoria Moseley (London)
Cowboy Neil Thomas (Melbourne) / Paul Hamilton (London)
Devising Input Bec Reid, Jeff Blake
Jessica Wilson
Independent artist / producer
jess@jessicawilson.com.au
+61 403 624 231
