Arrivals & Depar­tures: A Tale of Two Jour­neys — Fri­day, July 4th, 2pm SLT/Pacific

ARRIVALS & DEPARTURES — RADIO VERSION is a radio adap­ta­tion of a short sto­ry writ­ten by Cale­do­nia Sky­tow­er, orig­i­nal­ly record­ed for Fan­ta­sy Faire Radio as part of the 10th Fan­ta­sy Faire, the annu­al SL-based fund-rais­er for the Amer­i­can Can­cer Society.

The sto­ry was inspired by a superbly-imag­ined Steam­punk-inspired space­port cre­at­ed by lead­ing vir­tu­al world cre­ators The Look­ing Glass – Sharni Aza­lee and Mar­cus Inkpen – for Fan­ta­sy Faire 2018, which was used for the lat­er machin­i­ma ver­sion, which is avail­able on the CEH Pro­duc­tions web site.

ARRIVALS & DEPARTURES presents a glimpse into two indi­vid­ual jour­neys that are brought togeth­er and shared for the last time. It is about the one who leaves, the one left behind, and the essen­tial role of each. Though the word is nev­er uttered in the per­for­mance, it essen­tial­ly address­es aspects of our atti­tude to death.

“He has accept­ed the jour­ney on which he must now embark,” says real-life pro­fes­sion­al sto­ry­teller and the­atri­cal design­er Sky­tow­er. “His last act is to pass along that which has been most impor­tant in his life to some­one who is remain­ing behind – request­ing their com­mit­ment to car­ry on the work.”

“She is dropped with­out warn­ing into loss, grief, and accept­ing his lega­cy with no warn­ing or time to become accus­tomed to its inevitabil­i­ty,” Cale­do­nia goes on. “She must choose to be present for him in this moment, accept the com­mit­ment with which he tasks her, and be pre­pared to con­tin­ue on – while at the same time deal­ing with the shock and weight of it.”

ARRIVALS & DEPARTURES also high­lights the vital impor­tance of sto­ry­telling, hark­ing back to an ear­li­er time when tales were woven into a ver­bal tra­di­tion that was hand­ed down by word of mouth from one gen­er­a­tion to the next.