Invisible Lands was created in spring 2015 in response to events in the outside world, when the Arab Spring was followed by a refugee crisis that saw millions fleeing their bombed homes and lands to Europe. Many of them died on the way, many of them remained refugees without homes and without hope for the future. The play tells their story - it explores the journey, the memory of the journey, it questions the media and our own attitudes towards migrants and the gap that widens when they are 'elsewhere', yet so close.
How do we bridge the gap between seeing refugees as small figures on a TV screen and the physical and psychological experiences of these refugees? By changing the scale from miniature figures to full-body actors and by using two simultaneous narrative layers - micro and macro - the performers switch between these two perspectives and try to understand: how does it really feel to be a refugee on the move?
The authors and performers of the show - Sandrin Lindgren and Ishmael Falke - use their bodies as landscapes for miniature figures whose chaotic exile journey is filmed live with mini cameras. The audience follows the family up knee-high mountains in a helicopter the size of a matchbox, travels in a makeshift boat on a sea of stomachs, etc... The story of thousands of displaced people trying to survive and their daily dramas is told in a wordless, childish game.
