The Passport Project Website: http://www.thepassportproject.org
At one time, a passport represented one's nationality, citizenship, and freedom. But in the postmodern world of this play, the Passport Collector assembles antique passports once belonging to our storytellers who took their last journeys to find a home. The Passport Projectis a collaborative theatrical experiment between Miami and Oslo. The project disrupts the traditional playwriting process by involving not only playwrights, but also visual and sound artists from the start. We collected storytellers' visual research and sound samples representing their childhood memories and their "home". These experiments gave us tools that are not just words, but things like movements, rhythms, noises, and psychologically stimulating visual objects. Therefore, the script is written with scene descriptions with images and “Visual Narrative” to tell the story.
I teamed up with Cliff Moustache, a black artistic director who migrated to Norway from Seychelles. Moustache of Nordic Black Theatre/Oslo, Erik Lawson, sound designer/NYC, Meg Miroshnik, playwright/LA, and I conducted successful workshops in Miami and Oslo in 2018 & 19. Anchoring to the key words of immigration, migration, and passport, we collected stories from our “storytellers/actors.”
In April2023, The team produced a workshop production of The Passport Project–directed by Moustache and performed by the Faculty and Students of the University of Miami, Department of Theatre Arts. The process was video-documented, and in process of becoming a short film.