Nightfall

We made Nightfall in 2006/2007. It was commissioned and developed at Arnolfini and had a short UK tour.

In many ways, Nightfall was our most difficult show to make. It was a long time in development, and went through many different guises – it was at various points a site-specific show in a tower block, an end-on studio show, an outdoor show in a caravan, a show at dawn, and eventually a studio show which had to be performed at sundown. Time-specific, if you like.

It was the first time we had worked with another performer, Pete Phillips from the rather wonderful Search Party. Later in the process we also brought in our creative advisor Sara Jane Bailes to direct the final show.

It was difficult because the theme we started with, ‘falling’, was a very broad one. It took a long time to refine this into something we wanted to make a show about, and even then, when we arrived at the idea of nightfall, it was a theme which could go any way.

The final piece, on reflection, had a kind of off-key humour and darkness to it. It was a playful exploration into the feelings we get as the sun sets; the kind of things that night makes us do and say. It was like we were a odd troupe of pompous goths, obsessed with darkness and the size of the universe; it had a late-night radio DJ, real light readings of the setting sun, a stupid explanation of how and why the sun sets, a rambling late night dinner-table conversation about hedgehogs, and a final text which keeps coming back to haunt us – things that happen in the night without you in it. Here it is.

_There ‘s a lot that carries on without you when you go to sleep at night, like the traffic lights turning from green to amber to red, the rotating billboards and the well-lit shop fronts. Flights and buses and night trains and secret industrial operations and engineering and burst water mains and maintenance on the motorways and night hunting and bats flying and mice running amok and rats and spiders and badgers.

And the slaughterhouses and the battery hens laying their eggs all day and night and day and night as if its all the same; and the night owls, the barn owls and the snowy white owls and the man and woman having that last unnecessary nightcap, and the dancefloor grope, the stagger home to bed, the drunk taxicab home, the extra line that will push you over the edge, the long goodbyes, the silly hours back at home, the sexy hour you hoped for, the dark in bed time with a lover that no one but the two of you will every really know anything about, the late night gossiping that in a week’s time will break the back of a friendship of almost ten years; the pain that creeps up on us late at night when all other distractions and TV and eating and walking and talking and doing and dallying and everything else has stopped; and there’s news, the news, the breaking news, the local news, the regional news, the international news, the late night movie starring Nicholas Cage that you’ve been waiting to see for ages but when you start watching you know you’ll never make it all the way through; the shipping forecast, the sound of hedgehogs eating, the milkman reading a note, the muggers waiting down the alley, the jerk chicken bbqs, that radio music that means broadcasting is over for the day, the taxi rank, the burger van, the burger van, the falafel van, the baby’s cries through the wall, your heart ache, his headache, my yesterday, their impossibility, the need for a paint job, the need for change, the need for tomorrow, the need for yesterday and tomorrow but now now, not now all of this while I’m wanting to go sleep.

There’s the woman taking the calls in the late-night illegal cab outfit down the road that’s a front for an import racket that will get blown one of these days but she knows nothing about that; the all-night pharmacy where the wrong tablets have made it into a container while attention dropped for a second at 3am, and so tomorrow the manic depressive will take anti-inflammatory drugs and the old lady with arthiritis will feel a strange sense of hope, optimism and unexpected well-being; and the seagulls overhead, the dog and the cat, one upstairs, one gone missing, but they won’t know that until late tomorrow afternoon when Jinksy hasn’t been in for his food.

There’s the tragedy about to unfold when he wakes up in the morning and finds the note she’s left and her car not in the driveway; and the sound of the TV kept on at low volume throughout the night to keep things comfortable while he’s away; the neighbours bongo session; wind in the trees and in everything else; your face, your taste, the continuation of all your promises and lies; the family; nobody listens in this family; the unstoppable business of darkness, consciousness, clothing, air, stationary cars, that ceiling._

Devised by: Matthew Austin, Lucy Cassidy, Pete Phillips, Nina Wyllie and Suzie Zara
Performed by: Matthew Austin, Lucy Cassidy, Pete Phillips and Nina Wyllie
Creative Advisor: Sara Jane Bailes

2007
27 July: Arnolfini, Bristol (Work in Progress)

2008
26-27 January: Arnolfini, Bristol
25 April: Warwick Arts Centre
29 April: Exeter Phoenix
30 May: greenroom, Manchester
21 June: Camden People’s Theatre

An Arnolfini We Live Here Commission. Funded by Arts Council England.