about STILL NIGHT /

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Inspired by Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’, Still Night casts the city in the leading role. Whether performed in Brisbane or Yokohama, Kochi, Athens, Bristol, London, the performance shifts continuously, adapting its shape and colours to reflect those of the city beyond the windows.

Still Night takes Silvia and Gemma’s interest in architecture and site-specific work and blends it with instruction-based theatre (see Autoteatro). The audience begins in a lecture, where the city is introduced to us through the eyes of a visiting lecturer. Real events and places blend with imagined and mythical perspectives. Then the lights go off, and we sink into a dark and mysterious world, where the lecture audience reimagine themselves as the great Kubla Khan - listening to a vision of his own empire as described by Marco Polo. Teetering between two worlds, the room and the city beyond become more elusive until both lecturer and audiences start to question which world is real.

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‘Even in this sterile 12th-floor conference room, Mercuriali and Brockis make striking design choices: a glowing city unfolds from a dress; a horse plays at dice; a will-o’-the-wisp draws us to her lantern. We smell the jasmine in the gardens of Kublai Khan. We feel the first cool after spring rains. And, as our city is revealed to us in a new light in a very literal sense, we finally see why this venue might be the perfect one after all.’ 

Offstreet Press Brisbane

VIDEO | PROMO PACK | MADDIE COSTA ON STILL NIGHT | ANDY FILED ON STILL NIGHT

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