Passage

PASSAGE is very loosely based on a novel published in 1924 by a British author who spent a short time in India during the British military occupation of the country. That military occupation lasted in some form for almost two hundred years.  As a minor official, the British author would come in contact mainly with Indian subjects who were minor functionaries and servants of the British occupation, along with those Indian subjects who managed to do business and in some cases to profit from the occupation. The novel focuses on the various forms of racism that the British occupiers enacted toward their native servants, subjects, and business partners.  At the same time, the British occupation also caused extreme poverty, famine and a massive transfer of wealth and resources away from India to Great Britain, the occupying country. The author of the novel, as a colonizer himself, would tend to be less aware of these aspects of occupation, even when acutely observing the daily aggressions of racism and abuses of power by the occupying class. 

The playwright of PASSAGE has chosen a more emblematic approach, since occupation and colonization can take many forms.  The setting is no longer specific to India, and we are invited to associate and imagine other places or even places unknown.  The play focuses not on politics or geopolitics, but rather on the impact of imbalances of power on our relationships with each other. 

Following the novel, the play concerns a fairly narrow slice of society, where both the occupier and the occupied can become complacent and find the situation manageable.  For this Seattle production, the director and company have chosen to amplify some suggestions of the broader society and elements of the conflicts that grow out of occupation.  These conflicts can illuminate the challenges that the characters face in their attempts to navigate — or their failures to navigate — the pathways of love and friendship in a world of subjugation and resistance.