The Arrival

What’s it like leaving everything you know behind to travel alone to a strange and distant land, to an unknown place where—for you—nothing has a name? What does it feel like to be a stranger in a strange land?

Based on the wordless graphic novel of the same name by the award-winning author, Shaun Tan, “Arrival” is a visual and auditory narrative which conveys the experience of the ‘stranger in the strange land’ in a highly inventive way. The director and choreographer Zoe Chatziantoniou has put an original production on stage which brings adults and children face to face with all the changes life can bring, with all the ‘arrivals’ big and small we have to adapt to on a daily basis.

The “Arrival” is a fairytale about immigration in an imaginary time and place. A father is forced to leave his family and his homeland. With just a suitcase and very little money, he crosses vast oceans to reach an unfamiliar world with bizarre creatures and things. Hampered by language most of all, he seeks shelter, food and work in order to build a new life for himself and his family from scratch.

The production is a combination of theatre, dance, photography, silent cinema, video, sound and music. Five performer-narrators employ all the means the theatre provides to compose a history of “Arrival” live on stage, using objects which produce unfamiliar sounds to construct the production’s sound-world (based on a conception by Dimitris Kamarotos), and conjuring up an on-stage theatrical atmosphere which is on the cusp between reality and fantasy, fairytale and life. “Arrival” is the story of every immigrant, every refugee, every displaced person, but it is also a tribute to everyone who has made this journey.