Roam

April 2006

In an airport check in lounge, five female air stewards dressed in turquoise and two male pilots dress in black wearing sunglasses stand in a line. All have their arms raised in front of them, their hands flat and gesturing forwards.

Overview

Roam – the first ever full-scale theatrical production to be created in the passenger areas of an airport.

Roam is Grid Iron’s tenth anniversary production and their most ambitious to date. Set in and around the lounges and gates of Edinburgh International Airport, the production explores the phenomenon of mass global air travel. Are modern air passengers the contemporary equivalent of angels, bearing messages across the globe, or nomadic wanderers for whom home is no longer bound by national boundaries?

Inspired by a diversity of texts from Michel Serres, Pico Iyer, Alain de Botton and many others, as well as testimonies from refugees and airport workers, Grid Iron’s production combines a multinational company of ten performers together with a large group of non-professional participants aged five to eighty-five.

Roam begins as the last flight leaves, that liminal time when airports become something other, a twilight world of memories, travellers’ detritus, ghosts and echoes of tearful and joyous conversations. Roam reflects on national identity, the gross inequalities in our world, and the politics of terror and also on flight itself is a symbol of human achievement.

WINNER Best Ensemble, Best Technical Presentation and Best Theatre Production: Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland 2005-2006.