A traveller arrives at a border with a stack of battered cases. From within them, whole worlds will emerge…

Suitcase Show is an eclectic box set of short stories, each one told out of a suitcase. Dark, spiky, and comic, it touches on climate change, love and death, travel, and secrets that we carry with us – an overthrown autocrat finds themselves on the run from their own shadow, an astronaut turns their telescope back on earth and back in time. The staging is inventive, from lo-fi shadowplay to wireless projection, from dancing disembodied hands to narratives that crackle from a 70s stereo suitcase.

Trick of the Light ( The Bookbinder ) is one of Aotearoa / New Zealand’s most prolific touring theatre companies, renowned for crafting inventive shows and intricate narratives. Their work has toured throughout NZ, the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, South Africa, from sell out runs at the Edinburgh Children’s Festival, to the Lincoln Center in NYC, and the attic of Aotearoa’s oldest bookbi ndery. Suitcase Show reunites multi-award-winning collaborators Hannah Smith, Ralph McCubbin Howell, and Emmy award-winning composer and sound designer Tane Upjohn-Beatson.

Director Hannah Smith

Writer Ralph McCubbin Howell

Performers Ralph McCubbin Howell Hannah Smith

Sound Design and Composition Tane Upjohn Beatson

with additional composition by Robyn Bryant

Lyrics by Ralph McCubbin Howell

Production and Technical Design collaborators Brad Gledhill & Rachel Marlow (Filament Eleven 11)

Videography Dean Hewison

Prop Construction Hannah Smith Ralph McCubbin-Howell Rebekah de Roo Romina Menses Emory Otto

Figurines Jon Coddington

Marketing Sophie Helm