A man wakes, face down, sprawled across his single bed, the sunlight gently creeping through the window. Today is the day he will change his life. A Boeing 777 begins its descent towards Heathrow. The wheels unfold out of the belly of the plane. The frozen body of a stowaway is tipped out and cuts through the clear morning skyIn the car park of B&Q, Andy looks up. Something is falling out of the sky. A man crash-lands on the ground in front of him.Stowaway is the story of a man from India who moves to the UAE for the promise of work and prosperity. When he finds himself trapped within a Dubai labour camp, with his passport and wages withheld from him, he hides in the wheel well of a plane bound for the UK, in a bid for a better life. It s a story about invisible and physical borders and the people who transcend them.But what are the rules of telling someone else s story when they come from a world so very different from our own; where telling their story could act to perpetuate an unresolved history of imperialism?With the skeleton of a plane cutting across the stage, Stowaway flies back and forth through time and place, looking at storytelling as a political act.
A Boeing 777 begins its descent towards Heathrow.
The wheels unfold out of the belly of the plane.
The frozen body of a stowaway is tipped out
and cuts through the clear morning sky.
In the car park of B&Q, Andy looks up.
Something is falling out of the sky.
A man crash-lands on the ground in front of him.
Stowaway is a story about a man from India who finds himself far from home and adrift from everything he knows. He hides in the wheel arch of a commercial airliner bound for the UK, in a bid to change his life.
Stowaway is the story of an extraordinary journey in search of an impossible future. But what are the rules of telling someone's story when they come from a world so different from our own?
