Passage

by Christopher Chen

A fantasia inspired by E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, PASSAGE is set in the fictional Country X, which is a neocolonial client of Country Y. B, a local doctor, and F, an expat teacher, begin to forge a friendship that is challenged after a fateful trip to a local attraction. A meditation on how power imbalances affect personal and interpersonal dynamics across a spectrum of situations, the play allows a director wide latitude in casting the roles by race, ethnicity, and gender, with different casting choices highlighting different societal structures.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Fiction

72 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Leylamaría · Rating 4 out of 5]

G:
This is something I struggle with so much. I'm not going to lie. The struggle of being together, and being separate. Right? Think back to a person with whom you’ve had differences and reached an impasse. The immovable wall that comes up gives the feeling that even if you practice empathy, you can never truly understand another person’s experience. Right? And this failure to connect is where the seeds of anger and violence begin.
(Silence with cave sounds.)
Did the thought cross your mind: What if the person just disappeared?
Wouldn’t that be better? It's crossed my mind before. I'm not going to lie.

—

[4.5 stars]
Will be revisiting over the rest of the semester for our projects but tentatively I liked this quite a lot.

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this quite boring, unfortunately. It's so talky, and although the theatrical elements expand the universe beyond talk, it's just heavily, heavily dependent on talking through a series of ideas and teaching the audience something. I just have no interest in this kind of thing.

[Chris Laubach · Rating 2 out of 5]

This didn’t really work for me. I liked some of the dialogue, but not really where the story went. I’ll be excited to see it live

[Citlali Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Upon first read, using a certain context with it, I feel like it is not too heavy-hitting, which is maybe what audience members can only grasp within a two-act show and call it a night. Not to be that person but I need to see/hear it live to its fullest effect because I wasn’t getting any urgency when reading. It’s tame for the subject it’s trying to handle but maybe I don’t need to see more suffering to think it’s “better.”

[Katherine Kling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal. As a Country Yer often working in a Country X, this play spoke to me in a very uncomfortable and very familiar way. I wish all my colleagues and I could see this (read this aloud?) together.

[Gretta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this play, and while it was really interesting to look a power dynamics without specificity (so that we can see how powers imbalance in friendship, is often the same regardless of the specific setting) I did sometimes miss specificity. I think I would like this play a lot more performed.

[madison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming back after having done some backstage work for JHU Theatre’s production of Passage. The text itself presents interesting ideas about colonialism, etc., and some scenes (e.g. the final temple scene) are genuinely moving, but I’m not always convinced by the dialogue (often too dialectic) or the lack of cultural specificity. Should have relied less on the structure of “A Passage to India.”
Bumping my rating up to 3 stars rather than 2 because all of the problems of the text can be solved through strong direction and acting, which I did see in the JHU production.

[Kathryn Wylde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Passage asks whether a member of an oppressed group and a member of the oppressor group can be friends - real friends. Then plays out a scenario that highlights the difficulties.
The power of this play resides very much in its neutral setting (Country X, occupied by Country Y) and non-descript names (each a single initial and written for open casting). This takes us far from the baggage of any particular history and leaves the audience free to focus more objectively on the structure of the tensions at work.
Do recommend.

[widowanchor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chen's audience-interactive play feels like an English teacher assigning an essay about comparing & contrasting a real-life situation to a story. The performed version of this play is much better than the written, but it still feels hollow. I don't see a clear-cut and great justification for the extremely-overt messaging. Why can't the audience come to their own conclusions? It's infantilizing, not eye-opening.

[Jstoryhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really really liked this. Meditates on how power dynamics are (often subconsciously) omnipresent in our daily lives and in even our minutest relationships. I understand some criticism around plays that are as word-heavy as this is, but I certainly loved to read it. Interested to see how it plays out in performance; ask me about that in two weeks.

[John Perine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best play I’ve read in a while. I feel like I should read some EM Forster—his books have inspired some damn good theatre.

[Darby Steeves · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fairly Abstract and tough to follow up the page I felt. The themes were relatable.

[norah perfetto · Rating 4 out of 5]

i'm obsessed😦

[Gwyneth Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️3.75 stars. I feel like this could be even better than what it is now but overall I really liked it and found truth in it.