An immersive, experimental form of theatre uncovering the universal human experience of finding a new home

With the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.

At one time, a passport represented one's nationality, citizenship, and freedom, but in the

postmodern world of this play, passports are no longer valid. The Passport Collector assembles

antique passports once belonging to our storytellers, who took their last journeys to find a home. The

Passport Project is 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/actors' visual research and sound samples

representing their childhood memories and "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, images, and a “Visual Narrative” to tell the

story.

I am an Associate Professor at the University of Miami and a Japanese theatre designer who has lived

in the United States for over 30 years. I teamed up with Cliff Moustache, a black artistic director who

migrated to Norway from Seychelles. “People Move Around on the Globe” was the subject that

attracted both Moustache of Nordic Black Theatre in Oslo and me living in Miami. Two opposite sides

of the globe deal with immigration issues differently. But this project also discovered that people’s

struggles, pains, and happiness are the same everywhere.

Combining Norwegian and UM’s Provost Award funding, Moustache, Erik Lawson, sound

designer/NYC, Meg Miroshnik, playwright/LA, and I conducted successful workshops in Miami and

Oslo in 2018 & 19. Anchoring to the keywords of immigration, migration, and passport, we collected

stories from our “storytellers/actors.” For example, during the Miami workshop, Moustache

conducted multiple unique exercises that the storytellers engaged in, such as “What items do you

take along to your last journey if you have to leave your home forever?” The actors were asked to

pack actual suitcases with imaginary items they would take on their journey to cross borders. One

storyteller/actor shared his brave voyage to swim across a river to reach US soil in the 1990s. He

took off his last personal belonging, his wristwatch, right before he jumped into the water and gave

it to a stranger.

On stage, there will be many suitcases and boxes beached ashore. Inside each box is a key item from

each character’s experience. The show is filled with dream-like scenes and magical characters from

local folktales. The Hulder is a seductive Norwegian mystical troll that invites people into the woods

to kill them. Norwegian trolls represent tales of natives vs. immigrants, as natives became trolls in

the woods when Christians came and chased them away.

Now, Moustache has traveled to Miami to direct this iteration, and Lawson will also be in Miami to perform

his songs on stage. It is an international collaboration between Miami and Oslo.

The Passport Project is an exciting new style of theatre that has art-installation-like quality and

audience-immersive aspects. It’s a truly unique environment to ask the universal question: “How do

you find a home?”

-Michiko Kitayama-Skinner (Scenographer and Co-Producer)

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