Wish You Were Here investigates the paradoxical images of an island as either prison or paradise through an embodied conversation across distance.

Two performers conduct a conversation with each other over water, using the language of semaphore. As the performers converse, the experience of isolation becomes apparent.

The performed text has been developed from tropes of island as paradise, island as prison, and the historical perspective of islands as territory to be colonised. Found text from the letters of detained refugees create a monologue of imprisonment, isolation, and torture. Certain phrases are echoed in another (imagined) letter from an island paradise. The two perspectives come together and then diverge.

Costumes: Boni Cairncross
Photos: Lucy Parakhina
http://underbellyarts.com.au/