Vox Motus' 'Flight' Is A Familiar Refugee Story That Defies Explanation

Candice Edmunds – artistic director of Glasgow-based theatre company Vox Motus - is trying to describe their extremely unusual new show, Flight. “As we were making this wretched thing and trying to explain it to our co-producers,” she begins, “we thought when it opened the press would throw us this nice, succinct phrase to describe it. We wanted a three or four word summary of what we’ve made, but it’s never happened. Everyone just says it defies explanation.” 

Flight, which had a successful run in Edinburgh before making its way to New York, Ireland and now Melbourne, tells the story of two young brothers travelling from Afghanistan to London seeking asylum. Based on the novel Hinterland by Caroline Brothers, the story is an amalgamation of several first-hand accounts of unaccompanied minors in Europe. What makes this adaptation so unusual is its form. Audience members sit in private booths and look at a massive revolving carousel filled with 200 dioramas. “It’s like a 3D graphic novel being slowly unveiled before your eyes,” says Edmunds. Twenty-five people can experience it at a time, each at a different point in what Edmunds calls a “continual storytelling device”. 

“To me, it’s theatre,” Edmunds says. “The actors are very present, speaking right into your ear through the headphones. I can’t think of it as anything other than theatrical, even though it’s not a live stage experience. We didn’t realise we were making something so unique, but that’s also the joy of it – making something that’s really unusual in the landscape of theatre.” 

Could this story be told using a more conventional medium? “Oh, for sure,” says Edmunds. “It’s the story of our time - mass displacement of people. I think the unseen plight of unaccompanied children travelling in hope of seeking refuge or asylum could work in any medium.” 

"Everyone is tackling this issue of displacement and even though it might be about two boys travelling from Afghanistan to the UK, the parallels are immediately applicable, no matter what part of the world we go to.”

This makes her practice innately difficult to produce, and often even more difficult to describe, she says. “At the time we set out to make it, we were worried no one would buy a ticket because it felt like such an overwhelming and depressing narrative with no easy solution. We felt so committed to telling the story, but what can we do to entice people in? And we thought if we could make the form as interesting or intriguing as possible, then that might help people want to come and experience this story.”

Edmunds says the plight of refugees seemed simultaneously overwhelming and underexplored. “It felt like this really relentless front page headline story,” she says. “We just wanted to take it back to being human again. It’s so difficult, the numbers are so big. So really that was the starting motivation: how do we bring it back to something very intimate? At no point in the story do we talk politics, it’s really about these two brothers, their relationship and this journey that they go on. That’s not to say it’s not a political piece, but it’s motivated by really trying to understand an individual’s experience.” 

Given the turbulent geopolitical reality at present, Edmunds feels presenting this show now is particularly important. “Sometimes in our work, we tell stories that are just wild imagination,” says Edmunds. “That’s what we’re known for. But I think we live in troubling times and it’s important to find ways of having these conversations and the theatre is a great place to have a conversation about a difficult subject. It is important that we use that space to share ideas and talk about what’s troubling us.” 

So what’s it like having this show about a journey across continents now making its own way to different countries around the world? “There’s kind of a beautiful poetry in that, isn’t there?” Edmunds says with a chuckle. “It’s brilliant for it to be travelling around. We were worried that it was such a European story and we weren’t sure how it would be received. But then it’s opening in New York and we’re hearing all about the border with Mexico and we realise of course it’s a completely international story. Everyone is tackling this issue of displacement and even though it might be about two boys travelling from Afghanistan to the UK, the parallels are immediately applicable, no matter what part of the world we go to.”

Melbourne International Arts Festival presents Vox Motus' Flight until 21 Oct at Arts Centre Melbourne