21,000 Miles of Rail

There is a picture in my head. It looks like an old photograph. I am a Romanticist.
And in this picture, this image, I look just like Celia Johnson. I look just like Sophia Loren. I am a black and white image. I am standing on the platform. I am standing in the rain.
And I say something like…
“Kiss me as though you might never see my face again.”

21,000 Miles of Rail is a one-woman show that playfully explores potential encounters that can only happen when we are travelling by train. The work is concerned with travel by rail in the north of England, but was initially born out of a slightly unusual experiment.

I spent ‘a working day’ observing people passing through Leeds City Railway Station.  I sat for 8 hours, watching, imagining, and remembering. I thought about time, about travel, and about the effect of modern ticket barriers on notions of romance. I was a witness to all sorts of things. I waited. I spoke to no one.

21,000 Miles of Rail attempts to unpack the rules of talking on trains, and test the possibilities of chance encounters with strangers.

It isn’t a show about one person or one story or one, one-way ticket. It’s a season pass taking you on a number of routes, through a number of stations, following a number of people making their way… somewhere.

Somewhere between a musical, a theatre show and a brief encounter – 21,000 Miles of Rail is about telling stories and confronting the realities of the morning commute, with the magic surrounding travel by rail.

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(via Pyramid & Parr Hall website)