Train Lines
You might think a person who once spent 18 hours on trains to get to an acting class would be sick of them, but writer and actor Tremayne Gordon has turned his experiences on public transport into a play set to hit the stage for the Darwin Fringe Festival.
By Kylie Stevenson
Train Lines tells the story of Ash and Rose, two strangers who meet at a train station. Unbeknownst to them, the pair is connected by a mutual friend and have a lot in common.
Gordon says the idea for the play came to him when he spent a lot of time travelling from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane to attend acting classes – and on the epic 18-hour journey from Sydney to Brisbane.
He would often cross paths with people briefly, waiting for a train or helping someone find the right platform, and was left with a lingering feeling of what would have happened if they’d had more time to connect.
“You think ‘oh, that person was so nice, I hope they get to that suburb to visit their aunt’,” he says.
“But what if we’d had more of a chance to connect? Small conversations can mean so much.”
At just 22-years-old, Gordon has several plays, a short film and a music video under his belt. He wrote, produced and acts in Train Lines, but says being on stage is his first love.
“I love the liveness of theatre,” he says.
“It’s so organic. The adrenalin of being in the same room as the audience is something you just can’t get from film. It’s so immersive.
“A really good story on stage is something you’ll remember forever.”
Train Lines was first staged in Sydney in 2016 as part of the Short+Sweet Film Festival and Gordon hopes to tour the show more widely after bringing it to the Darwin Fringe.
He says the underlying message in the play is that everyone you meet has a story and it serves as a reminder for people to be kind to one another.
“I hope it reminds people of all the times they’ve fallen in love with a stranger on a train and let their imagination run away with them,” he says.
Tue 10 – Sat 14 Jul | 7.30pm | Brown's Mart Theatre | See the event listing
