Take Flight with ‘Long Distance Affair’ (Review)

In the past, when traveling abroad, I’ve typically avoided the most heavily trafficked, popular tourist sites in a city. I find the chance to learn about or meaningfully engage with local culture to be lacking when I’m merely reading off bland signs or listening to scripted tour guides. To truly experience a city’s culture, I seek out the local citizens living there. It’s in listening to how they shape their identities, values, and traditions in relation to everyday life that any understanding of culture begins. It’s this sentiment that encapsulates my experience with Long Distance Affair from Juggerknot Theatre Company and PopUp Theatrics.

Long Distance Affair’s premise is a simple one. Audiences can embark on two separate yet similar pre-packaged trips “visiting” three different cities. One trip’s destinations consist of Lagos, Mumbai, and LA with the other trip’s destinations being Beirut, Portland, and Mexico City. Both pre-packaged trips are bought separately, requiring “travelers” looking to visit all six cities to attend two separate shows. But Long Distance Affair offers each trip twice a night so with early enough and careful planning, both trips can be experienced back-to-back.

In each city, audiences will meet with an actual local citizen who shares a story delving into the life, history, and struggles of living there. And the magic of this “traveling” is done through Zoom through the use of breakout rooms. And in its current iteration, the companies have made strong thematic changes to its structure from the 2020 Zoom-based version, allowing for a smoother experience and a greater focus on the work from their coterie of international artists and creators.

(Minor spoilers follow.)

For those acquainted with Long Distance Affair, either as a returning traveler or having read our review from last year, this all might sound familiar. And it generally is but only in function. After all, we don’t fault a ten-minute play or short film festival for having the same “setup” every year. The point is to have a strong yet reusable structure, allowing showcased work to shine when presented to a new audience.

In the 2021 version of the experience, there’s now the conceit that the audience is “traveling together” on an “airplane.” The execution of this minor enhancement goes a long way. Onboarding instructions are conveyed by “flight attendants’’ providing “safety instructions” on what to expect and how to use Zoom. Traveling to the next city requires a brief “layover” on the airplane where upbeat music plays, keeping energy high. At no point did my typical Zoom fatigue from being shuffled around set in. Like some dead weight, I simply forgot to pack it.

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As for the six cities, each one is a rewarding trip worth taking. The stories told by each local creative team are deeply thought provoking, profoundly moving, or emotionally devastating. I found my trips to Mumbai and Beirut to encapsulate all three. While the sun rises in Mumbai, actor Neha Singh opens my ears to hearing my soul’s unique beat while chronicling her own struggles to do so as a woman in her culture. And in the final nighttime hours in Beirut, I twist and bend my body in an intimate movement class under actor Pia Haddad direction, where her subtle lessons in dealing with loneliness and isolation are not lost on me. Additionally, like its 2020 iteration, each destination also includes dynamic camera work and bold staging, putting most other Zoom-based immersive theatre experiences to shame. Long Distance Affair flaunts how Zoom can be used in a dynamic manner rather than mimicking the feel of a bland Monday morning work meeting.

However, as a begrudgingly offered travel tip, I recommend not booking both pre-packaged trips of three cities to be done back-to-back on the same night. (Previously, the audience could book passage to each city separately or as a package of three. This seemed messy at best, instigating long “travel delays” in the main Zoom meeting last year.) Offering only two trips of three cities each allows for a quicker and smoother experience. Yet, experienced together, the six cities produce a deflating sense of déjà vu as a recycling of similar subject matter and themes appears to the participant. In each package, one city holds a story steeped in a family tragedy, another one has an examination of the light found within ourselves, and another one regales us with a tale of some kind of technological advancement influencing human behavior. And if you’re an unlucky traveler like myself, they’ll be done in the same exact order each time in both packages. It’s odd to find such thematic sameness lurking within Long Distance Affair. While the high energy and deep passion found in each city is able to rise above this feeling of repetition, none are able to completely break free from it.

Additionally, those looking for a high level of engagement best look elsewhere. Interaction with the local citizens is direct, but brief, when there even is any interaction. Sometimes there’s none at all.

Someone could argue Long Distance Affair isn’t even immersive or immersive enough. Depending on the points of their argument, I could be persuaded to agree with them. But I believe the best immersive experiences engage both the body and the mind. Many online experiences focus too hard on trying to get the audience to believe they’re all not stuck at home, overlooking how setting the mood and tone is equally important. While immersive experiences need to help guide their audiences in leaving the real world behind, the experience must also offer a worthwhile and tangibly believable world as their destination. Sometimes it really is the destination that matters just as much as the journey taken to get there.

While traveling to other cities across the world right now is impossible because of the pandemic, in each local citizens’ story, I believed I was there, feeling the pulse of their city beating within me. Physically, I was in my home office, starting at the computer screen as usual. But mentally, I’d been invited into a kind stranger’s home where, in their personal space, I listened to their grippingly emotional story.

So in that sense, Long Distance Affair is the best trip I’ve taken in years. So I encourage you to board the aircraft, sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.

Long Distance Affair runs through February 21st. Tickets are $40 per person for a pre-packaged trip to three destinations.

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