Director, writer, and choreographer Shana Carroll discusses her creative process for the complex and magical show Passengers.

Where did you get the idea to work with the world of trains?

The creative process involves a lot of mechanisms. I’ve always been attracted to trains because they are a reminder of past times and lands, but also a step toward the future, since they lead us to countries we have not yet visited. I’ve always been interested in the symbol of the train. When I was young, there was a train that ran about 10 kilometers from my home. Every time it went by, it was like a call, something deeply powerful. You couldn’t hear anything else. And when I was in my 20s, I did a lot of shows in Europe, so I spent a lot of time on trains. Many pivotal moments of my life happened there.

I was fascinated by the different contradictions that train travel involves: the feeling of not moving at all, of being stuck in a box while moving at a crazy speed, and the juxtaposition of the landscape and the reflection of one’s own face in the window. There is also the element of chance: we take the decision to get on a train, but at the same time we are stuck in it, without knowing the people who accompany us, and we have no control over the sequence of events. I have so many incredible stories in trains, talking for hours with strangers of all ages, geographical origins, and social backgrounds.

How did you apply these ideas on stage in Passengers?

There are always different layers in a creation. What I do is that I let the idea simmer slowly, to get to its essence, which can be summed up in one sentence. In this case, the death of my friend and collaborator Raphael Cruz in January 2018 was determinant. I had started writing a few months before, with the intention of making a more narrative show, like Murder on the Orient Express, with different narrative arcs for each character. Then Raphael died, and I was in mourning, I was in pain. I had the feeling of having lost my accomplice, my compass. And I believe that creation is the antidote for getting through the darkest matters. Only this time, I said to myself that nothing made sense: this young man had died so early. There was no possible antidote, no solution.
Then one day, a few weeks after Raphael’s death, I told Sébastien Soldevila, another co-founder of The 7 Fingers, that I wanted the world to be a magical place again, not a place where young men who are dear to me die. He answered me with this decisive sentence: “The world is both at once.” And that’s it, for me it was the sentence that would summarize my project. Suddenly all the contradictions implied by trains came back to me. So yes, sometimes people die, but sometimes there is magic too. There is no path that is necessarily happy or unhappy; we are on two parallel tracks, and we try to follow both at the same time. This is how the train became a metaphor for this notion, a reflection on this dichotomy.

Then I wanted to apply chapters: departure, transit, and arrival, in all their forms, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Hearty farewells, happy departures, a trip stuck in the middle of perfect strangers, sleeping on a train (there is something magical about sleeping on a train). For music, we added a song that Raphael wrote five years ago that we had never used. There is a passage where he plays the piano, so in a way, he is part of the show.

How do you choose the artists you want to see in your show?

I choose artists I know and really want to work with. I met some at the National Circus School of Montreal. I was in contact with others after having worked with them before. I particularly appreciate when an artist has multiple talents, when she or he knows how to move and play comedy well. I also want an artist who is a good person, with a good soul. I like working with these artists for who they are as people as well as artists.