General introduction

• We watched it on the 8th of February 2024 in the Laurence Batley theatre in Huddersfield, which is a small-scale proscenium arch theatre. 
• It was made by a small-scale touring company who wanted to explore empathy as a wider theme and tell the story of every person trying to flee their homes by using as little spoken language as possible. 
• Audience levels of empathy were measured throughout the performance using mobile phones to make us question the empathy we express towards different communities and why our levels of empathy differ towards different people. 
• The structure of the performance was fragmented and episodic; we saw snapshots of the journey and they used direct address to deliberately make a relationship with the audience.  
• Throughout the piece the actors had informal moments of direct address where they dropped out of character which Paper Birds call a non-acting performance technique; they exposed the method and pointed out how they made the performance. They do this to make us aware that while this is performance, it is about real-life events that real people go through. 
• There are three actors who use multi-role: they switch between who is playing the main character. Sometimes they also use non-acting. 
• They use video and set design to create many different locations. 
• It’s an example of dance theatre. 
• They want to build a relationship with the audience, so they often drop out of character to remind the audience they are watching a piece of theatre. 
• They expose the method of the creation of the performance.  
• The piece uses some verbatim material.