Performing Elusive Mobilities: Ritualization, Play, and the Drama of Scheduled Departures

Drawing upon three years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the ferry-dependent islands and remote coastal communities of British Columbia, this paper examines the process of catching a ferry in time for a scheduled sailing. Through performance, interactionist, and nonrepresentational theory, I argue that the weaving of a journey toward the ferry terminal can be a suspenseful drama, within which a scheduled departure works as a potential to be actualized through the performance of skillful acts of mobility. The affective, ritualistic, and playful components of passengers' journeys are examined through the lens of performance. Timing, spacing, and acting occasion differential ecologies of affect.