Nightcalls
Credits
By & With Mila Dargies, Janis Fisch, Karoline Kähler, Clara Minckwitz, Felix Scheer, Aishe Spalthoff, Jasper Tibbe
Set & Instruments Stefan Gottwill
Sounddesign Nicolas Schneider
Translation & Supertitels Kate Mcnaughton
Age 12 years and older
Duration 75 minutes
Time & Location
- 04/29/17 11:00 am
THEATER AN DER PARKAUE im Prater
accessible - 04/29/17 7:00 pm
THEATER AN DER PARKAUE im Prater
accessible - 04/30/17 6:00 pm
THEATER AN DER PARKAUE im Prater
accessible | followed by the Festival-Closing
Supporters
Funded by: The Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, the Federal German Performing Arts Fund, the Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation, the Waldemar Koch Foundation
These two, they are always together. Beauty and the beast, they’ve always been an item and really don’t care about anyone else. They hold hands and sneak into strangers’ gardens. During their nightly adventures, they meet three weird figures – a cupboard, a chair and a stove. The pieces of furniture look great, they are curious – and call the idea of these two always being together into question. Isn’t it boring when it is always just the two of them?
The theater group James & Priscilla places a modern fairy tale on stage with Nightcalls and asks what it means to be a couple, what that has to do with being an individual and self-realization and how much closeness one really needs. The stage is at times a forest, at times a castle, at times a garden, but actually is just a chandelier made out of microphone cables hanging from the ceiling. The soundtrack of the production is made up of twelve pop songs from the last few years, played live by the gigantic pieces of furniture with their built-in instruments and the couple on bass and guitar.
James & Priscilla was founded in 2009 in Hildesheim and has combined text and music made from pop songs into theater productions ever since. The result could be called pop opera, minimalistic picture theater or an abstract live radio play. Thanks to the selective use of gestures, facial expressions and allusions from the world of dance, they replace broad gestures and create a contemporary form of pathos. The theater group has already been part of numerous festivals throughout Germany and Europe. Nightcalls is their fifth production and was most recently invited to take part in the 2016 Spurensuche festival at COMEDIA Theater Köln.
Vote
Two lead singers stand in the dark with their guitars at the front of the stage. They speak sparing and fragmented sentences in a very relaxed and cool tone. As an audience member, one spends a great deal of time trying in vain to logically combine these text fragments in order to derive from them the situation and location in which we find ourselves in this production. And, most of all: what role do these two musicians assume within it. It takes some time, but gradually an absurd and surrealistic story about two young people, their unusual hobby and the adventure they have in pursuing it unfolds. The tempo of the production increases and the events, absurd as they are, crystallize into a narrative logic.
The group James & Priscilla arranges text and music from pop songs in their productions. Nightcalls also moves from pop song to pop song. That would quickly become boring if the songs were not performed live by costumed performers. In the style of the Disney film Beauty and the Beast, they have created grotesque furniture costumes and play electronic instruments which have been built into these costumes.
Once one has amused oneself as an audience member as well as engaged with this unusual combination on a level of critical distance, one finds oneself emotionally engaged toward the end of the production. The dramaturgy, in strong contrast to “regular” conventions, has a very classic catharsis built into it which functions surprisingly well. Suddenly one observes how the musical furniture has initiated an entire thought process about friendship, relationships, opportunism, trust and betrayal. Here, the audience could be left behind in despair with their own thoughts. But, like a fairy tale, we are led to a happy ending.
With Nightcalls, James & Priscilla has sought to develop a performative language which speaks to children, young people and adults as well. A very unique signature has been created, which combines pop culture influences from film and music together with performance and narrative theater.
Mijke Harmsen