I suppose it’s appropriate that a show about train journeys represents a kind of departure for The Old Globe.

For a while now, even before the pandemic, we’ve been thinking about the best way to program our indoor spaces during the period when our outdoor theatre is in operation. We’ve looked at family-friendly programming, at musical theatre, at comedy, and, last summer, at limited runs of special theatrical events. This last has revealed to us a real appetite in San Diego for work that’s unique and that’s different in certain ways from the playwright-driven, highly narrative fare of the rest of our subscription season. We’ve always known that the Globe audience is smart and curious; we’ve learned that it’s hungry too, for experiences that harness all the elements of theatre to transport us to places we’ve never before imagined.

That’s why we’re so happy to bring Passengers to our city. A creation of the extraordinary Montreal-based company Les 7 doigts de la main, The 7 Fingers, it’s a piece that defies easy categorization, just as its creators do. Drawing on the long and rich history of the European circus tradition, The 7 Fingers makes theatre by fusing acrobatics, dance, movement, song, text, and spectacle. Their work is thematic more than it is narrative, and yet it tells stories by putting human beings into complex and charged situations and watching them navigate their way through. Their company members perform remarkable acts of physical control and precision and gobsmacking feats of aerial daredevilry. But deployed in the context of the theatre, these circus-derived techniques rise to the level of metaphor. Flying on silks becomes an expression of love. Walking a tightrope, an image of how to transcend loss. Juggling, a demonstration of control in the face of chaos. This is theatrical sleight-of-hand, this is the conjuration of wonder.

Passengers considers what happens when we travel on a train. We say goodbye to loved ones as we leave the station, or reunite with them when we get to our destination. We watch the landscape out the window and imagine the lives of the people in the towns we speed through. We meet an intriguing stranger and maybe we fall in love. For the length of the journey, we’re in community with the others on the train, and then we return to our separate lives.

This is the stuff of theatre: characters, relationships, emotions. And this is also the stuff of spectacle, of joy, and of marvel. I find this show deeply engaging, really provocative, and thoroughly delightful. It represents another step in our commitment to bring the widest variety of excellent theatre to San Diego, and I hope it is the beginning of a long relationship with this great company.

In that sense it’s less a departure than an arrival.

Thanks for coming. Enjoy the show.