DRIVING HOME by Dante or Die to Tour UK Inside a Black Cab

Theatre company Dante or Die will invite audiences into the passenger seat of a black cab for Driving Home, a new immersive documentary exploring the lives, memories and journeys of five taxi drivers across contemporary Britain.

Transforming a decommissioned black cab into a pop-up cinema, this free 20-minute experience seats just three people at a time. Sitting inside the cab and enveloped by spatial audio, audiences watch a 20-minute film unfold across the windscreen and windows around them, following five real taxi drivers through the places they call home.

Taxi drivers occupy a unique place in the life of a town or city. Crossing neighbourhoods and social boundaries every day, they witness lives unfolding from behind the wheel. Their conversations touch on migration and belonging, work and financial pressures, family, community, and the changing face of Britain, revealing experiences that are at once deeply personal and surprisingly universal.

The immersive design places audiences directly inside those encounters. Cinematic footage of the passing streets surrounds the cab, while animation moves beyond the physical journey into the drivers' memories and imagined landscapes. At moments, the real world gives way entirely to places recalled by the person speaking, creating a visual landscape where memory and place meet the present.

Daphna Attias and Terry O'Donovan, Artistic Directors of Dante or Die said 'We both migrated to the UK more than 20 years ago and have made it our home. Driving Home grew out of our own experiences of belonging and identity, and the conversations we've had over the years about what 'home' really means.

As we began researching the project, we found ourselves having remarkable conversations with taxi drivers. There's something unique about being in a taxi. You're alone with a stranger, connected through the rear-view mirror rather than direct eye contact, and the journey somehow creates permission for unexpected honesty.

Again and again, conversations began with the question, 'Where are you from?' — a question that has become increasingly loaded. One of the drivers featured told us he sometimes tells people he's Turkish because he didn't know where the conversation might lead if he said he was from Afghanistan. Others spoke about changing their names to sound 'less foreign', protecting themselves from prejudice they feared they might encounter.

Taxi drivers occupy a unique place in their communities. They know the streets, hear people's hopes, anxieties and opinions every day, and have their fingers on the pulse of the places they live. We wanted to create a space where audiences could listen to those stories and perhaps recognise something of themselves within them'

Blending documentary, immersive technology and animation, Driving Home features an original score by Mercury Prize-nominated artist Dr Obaro Ejimiwe (aka Ghostpoet). Alongside the tour, Dante or Die will work with local communities, including migrant and refugee groups, exploring personal stories through a programme of creative workshops.

The drivers featured are Ashley Arnold (Thurrock, Essex), Amberine Nawaaz (Bradford), Frank Anb Amonoo-Mensah (Peckham, London), Mihail Marin (Hull) & Farhad Ghafoori (Medway, Kent).

Tour Dates

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