Have you ever sat in an airport and wondered where all the people around you are going? A new exhibit at the Birmingham airport aims to answer those questions. It invites travelers to step inside a video booth and tell the stories behind their journeys.
At a launch event before the Labor Day travel weekend, Phyllis Singletary was one of the first to try out the WAYHAY booth. WAYHAY stands for “where are you headed and why?” Singletary took the seat inside the shiny, futuristic-looking compartment.
“You just push the button, and you start talking,” she explained. “I think you have a minute to tell your story. You just talk to the camera.”
Her face appeared on a screen in front of her, along with numbers that counted down.
Singletary wasn’t traveling that day, but she will be soon. She told her story as if it were her travel day.
“I'm excited that I'm going to see my son today,” she said. “He's going to meet me in Orlando, and we're going to spend a week together and just enjoy each other because I miss him. He's my only child.”
The WAYHAY booth is the brainchild of Eunice Elliott, a Birmingham native, actress and comedian. She travels a lot to perform and said the idea for the project came to her in an airport, because she’s always curious about her fellow travelers.
“Every journey has a story, and so you may be going to Dallas for a wedding, but you know, is this your best friend that helped you through a tough time, or maybe you're going to say goodbye to a grandparent, or maybe you're starting over?” Elliott said at the kickoff event.
She said she’s benefited from sharing her story, and she wants to give others that opportunity. Airports are a natural place for that, she said, because everyone is in transition for different reasons.
“Sometimes with the hustle of travel, you don't get a chance to stop and reflect on the why,” Elliott said. “And so, hopefully, this will also give travelers a moment to just sit and pause and reflect on their why.”
After each person’s video is recorded, a question appears on the screen, asking them about the vibe of their trip. Multiple-choice answers include celebration, going home, business, and new adventures.
Singletary chose “bittersweet.”
“It'll be bittersweet because when I go to meet my son in October, we’re actually going to be honoring my husband who passed away, and his birthday is in October,” she said.
The booth will be in the airport’s main rotunda, just past the security checkpoint, through October. People can record their stories through the WAYHAY website as well. Participants using the booth can enter their email addresses on the screen, and the system will send them copies of their videos. The recordings also will be published on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
But Elliott has bigger plans for them.
“My dream is that this will develop into a full docuseries of ordinary people on extraordinary journeys,” she said.
Elliott also said she’ll be building what could become the largest archive of human travel stories in the world. And she hopes the WAYHAY booth at the Birmingham airport will be the first of thousands around the world.
But, she said, it was important to her to pilot the project in her hometown.
“I find so many times when people think about Birmingham all over the world, they still see us in black-and-white footage,” she said. “And so this is my opportunity to share the stories of Birmingham that are alive and in living color.”
