At Night

A journey through the dark time of the day

 

At night all cats are …. Green? Dark yellow? Pale pink? Or simply grey? And what about the nightshade plants? Do they only grow in the shadows of the night and does the night have a shadow at all? Where do the sounds come from, is there something moving in the bushes? What really happens during this special time when – as mum and dad say – everything is asleep?

 

Based on motifs from Wolf Erlbruch’s book of the same name, “At night” invites you on a journey into the darkest time of the day: noises suddenly become symphonies, houses grow into the sky and the moon is snatched out of the sky without further ado. In the night hours, everything suddenly seems possible, more so than during the day, especially in our current reality of life. “At Night” celebrates courage and imagination, confronts the monsters under the bed and shows how man can jump over his own shadow.

 

Gripped by dark serenity /
she reaches for stars that /
in the dark blue of the evening sky /
suddenly appear closer than during the day.
Dreams dreamed during the day /
are planted and well watered /
in night-shade glasshouses /
brought to blossom.

 

At night all the cats are grey and anyway nothing happens on the streets, in the flats, in the forest and in the meadow. Everyone is asleep. The people? Sleep. The hare? Sleeping. The sheep in the pasture? Asleep. The hind in the forest? Sleeping. Everything sleeps, sleeps, sleeps. And that’s that! Is that right?

 

Lured by the sounds of the night, which blend together as if to form a symphony, a girl sets out to explore the night. What happens outside the window, what is there to experience when the step is taken through the curtain and the city and countryside suddenly reveal themselves at a time of day that is often only accessible to night owls?

 

The curious girl steps further and further into the darkness, always carrying glowing orbs to show her the way back. On her journey through the night, she encounters talking constellations and is hurled by an exploding firmament into a world where fantasy and reality intermingle. Carpets of colour spread across the various landscapes, fireflies invite her to dance, shadows become huge and tiny, play tricks and cannot be contained. It is clear: the night is so much more than sleep, darkness and idleness.

 

While the girl dances her way through the night, disembodied voices, night figures without form, tell her what there might be to see. They describe the girl’s path, laugh and rejoice with her, fear with her and would so much like to dance with her. The older voices that always claim that nothing happens at night are proven wrong – but are they ready to accept it?

 

Press:

…Images, sounds, music, dance and play, however, not only result in ideas of what happens in the darkness, but in the fantastic images they also remind us of dreams, in which much more is possible than in real life with its physical laws like gravity and others…

(kijuku.at / 15.11.2021)