Photo by Alexandre Galliez.
Production by The 7 Fingers
Presented by American Repertory Theater
Co-produced by TOHU (Montréal, Canada) and ArtsEmerson (Boston, États-Unis)
Written, directed, and composed by Shana Carroll
Composition and music direction by Colin Gagné
Lyrics Colin Gagné, Shana Carroll
Lighting design by Eric Champoux
Projection design by Johnny Ranger
Featuring: Victor Crépin, Eduardo De Azevedo Grillo, Isabella Diaz, Marie-Christine Fournier, Téo Le Baut, Amanda Orozco, Michael Patterson, Basile Pucek, Santiago Rivera, Méliejade Tremblay-Bouchard
September 2 – 26, 2025
Tickets
Loeb Drama Center
64 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Review by Maegan Clearwood
This production contains haze and flashing lights.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. –Since moving to Boston four years ago, I have been spoiled rotten by access to top-tier circus – from kitschy Halloween horrors with Boston Circus Guild’s Cirque of the Dead (now an annual tradition of mine) to a breathtaking showcase of talent from the instructors at Commonwealth Circus Center in Jamaica Plain. I am in awe of the twisty, bendy, flippy talent that’s on regular display here in my own backyard.
Aside from this array of homegrown talent, Boston also has an ongoing love for Montreal circus troupe The 7 Fingers. The A.R.T. presented the ensemble’s spin on Pippin in 2012, and ArtsEmerson hosted Duel Reality last season, an irreverent twist on a Shakespearean classic. This fall, the troupe is back at The A.R.T. with its production of Passengers, which first premiered in Boston in 2019.
Passengers, written, directed, and composed by Shana Carroll, is an original piece, structured around a series of travel-themed vignettes. Passengers strives to transcend genre conventions, utilizing circus as one of many performance tools to interrogate the human experience.
Carroll employs song, dance, spoken word, and projections alongside (never quite interwoven with) traditional circus acts. These elements frequently occur simultaneously: ensemble members writhe, tumble, and spin across the stage floor while a featured aerialist spins above their heads; a performer interrupts the semi-darkness by shining a flashlight in their partner’s face; Colin Gagne’s original music is piped through the speakers while train tracks hurtle by on the three projection screens (by Johnny Ranger).
Your mileage may vary regarding whether this experience is stimulating or cacophonous. The opening night audience oohed and ahhed to no end, an understandable response for an ensemble of such stunning caliber. Personally, as someone who frequently struggles with motion sickness and migraines, these multisensory sequences were eye-straining. It was also unclear where the focus of a given scene was meant to be, detracting from any emotional impact the performers were trying to convey.
Pre-show materials note that the production contains haze and flashing lights; I recommend that anyone sensitive to these elements take this advisory very seriously.
In general, Passengers fails to lean into its biggest strength: the performers themselves. If streamlined and willing to trust the performers’ raw abilities, it could be a powerful physical dance piece. Glimmers of this potential shine through in the piece’s simpler moments: travelers pushing and pulling each other off of a busy platform or straining to constrain themselves in a claustrophobic train car are moving in a restrained, dynamic way.
These moments come to a screeching halt when the performers are tasked with having to perform a sultry cabaret number or an extended comedy sequence about temporal theory.
The performers are also disadvantaged by the muted, gray-on-gray costumes and lighting. I often struggled to see bodies and faces, which is a particular shame for a medium that is as visually reliant as circus.
Passengers walks a tightrope between its intended introspective tone and the high-flying, spectacle-driven nature of circus. It frequently loses its balance, but the physical performances are so dazzling that audiences likely won’t care. It’s an ambitious, if less-than-successful, experiment that pushes the boundaries of what circus can be, and a unique addition to Boston’s roster of circus delights.
