IN DEVELOPMENT | THIS HIGHWAY HOME
By Ross Mueller & Stephen Oakes

“They named the theatre after the factory. They sponsor the footy club. My father worked there, I worked there, my brother worked there… Now they’re shutting down… what does that make me? History, I suppose.”

When you grow up here, you just want to escape. But eventually you find yourself coming back, down this highway. The reasons are too many; to have kids, to look after parents, to find work, to just come home. But once you get here…what do you do? The football team is winning and the Ford factory is closing. What happens when the team begins to lose?

THIS HIGHWAY HOME will be an intimate epic, devised, constructed and performed by the two key creators - Mueller and Oakes.

It will incorporate honest accounts of life from the Ford Factory to the Ford Theatre. It will compile extractions of contemporary oral history and re-invent them as songs, stories, characters and images.

The work will take the shape of a theatrical performance. It will utilise projection, story telling, spoken word, text messaging, live music, sound loops and animation. It will be a fluid entertainment in a similar fashion to a live music gig that explores notions of home, industry, distance, masculinity and a landscape of change.

http://thishighwayhome.blogspot.com/