WAYFARING STRANGER charts the life of an itinerant character, embodied by seven performers, across seven days representing seven decades. Running from the city, through post-industrial edge lands and manicured enclaves, they find themselves in forests, farms, mountains and finally at the shore. Along the way, which lasts a lifetime, they undergo a transformation, through the seasons and changing geography, both physically and emotionally, from youth to elderhood, and from a single, alienated being into an accepted element of the wider world. Their personal narrative co-exists with the past, present and future of the land they traverse. Each ‘day’ is a ‘station’ that signifies a turning point in their emotional development: from escape, through loss, grief and waywardness, to solidarity and co-existence.
Part fable, part manifesto, part poem, filmed across landscapes marked by centuries of ceaseless human extraction, Wayfaring Stranger asks what it takes to find a liveable life on one’s own terms and without conflict with others and the environment.
Within the sound design by multi-award-winning sound recordist Chris Watson, the polyphonic environment scores the seasonal changes alongside the human and topographic shifts.
