Over the years we have explored small Irish towns, families, artists, lovers, friends, plays within plays, musicals, graphic novels, love, death, memory and revolution. You have taken these journeys with us. Sometimes we have spoken to each other about what we saw, or felt, or thought. But most of the time we have not. We have merely walked the same path for an hour or two and gone our separate ways.
And then, suddenly we cannot meet.
And in the space apart, what is most striking is how much you can share with someone, and still not know them. How many questions will never be answered, because there was never the time or opportunity to ask. How many wonderful and moving stories you might be sharing a space with at any given moment. And how those stories, woven together, can create and build a community. Over the years, by some magic we cannot name, we have come to feel a connection to you. Without realizing it, we have come to look for you, and to feel a spark of delight when we find you there. This is the place we call home.
This project is a celebration, or perhaps a critique, or perhaps both, of the place we are in and the places we call home. It is an attempt to see what is created, what stories are told, and what conversations begin by sharing pieces of our own lives through means that do not depend upon a shared language. We do not yet know the end result, but to take this journey together, to get the chance to know each other just a little bit better, feels precious and valuable.
-Jennifer Lin, Company Member and creator of Home/Place
Home/Place is Third Rail’s third Company Innovation project, an annual production slot that allows Company Members to explore theatre that approaches structure, story, design, and point of view in new and surprising ways. Previous Company Innovation projects were Isaac Lamb’s pared-down, all female, six person concert staging of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man (2018) and Jennifer Lin’s immersive, multimedia adaptation of the graphic novel by Paul Hornschemeier, Mother, Come Home (2019).
The first step of the Home/Place process is to solicit images from our audience and community, following three prompts:
- The home I was born to
- The road I traveled
- The home I made
Jennifer Lin has put together a graphic representation of some of the submissions received so far, starting to explore how Home/Place can use visual storytelling to highlight the layers, connections, and pathways of our collective memories.
Stay tuned for the next steps in this fascinating, timely project. We hope you will join us to see where it leads.
