Late Night

This is the winter of our lives

“We decided that the play would be titled ‘Late Night.’ Late at night, we knew not what to do. We had realized that reality is larger than its interpretations. We always had the sense that the world is scattered. We wanted the people’s journey through Europe to be described through their personal narratives – against a backdrop of a shuttered political map, with their ideologies in an absolute dead end, as subjects are constantly torn between their desires and historical necessity; between their need to be loved and modern confusion; between the persistence of memory and the need to forget and be forgotten. We were thinking that our dreams might be extravagant, ridiculous, or impossible, but they are what they are. Late at night, we were living thousands of lives at the same time, but we felt immobilized.

We saw that historical memory is shaped by the people’s personal memories and confusion. We decided that these people would be us. We started talking about bombarded stations, military troops conducting night raids, abandoned airports, dates in the parks of Berlin or Antwerp, people that got lost in the noise of this world. We never understood the things we loved. So we were left all alone. We witnessed the seas rising over the buildings, and the war destroying entire cities. We knew that all these would happen. Late at night, we knew not what to do. We composed a narrative that would never be completed, with the main characters on the border between resigning and resisting, with the people’s personal memories colliding against the chaos of history. We realized that modern life increasingly resembles a daze that we will never manage to understand on time. Time doesn’t exist. History doesn’t exist. Our life span is short. We staged a night over Europe, where the war has started and still continues, where metropolitan cities are destructed and all networks collapse. Late at night, we knew not what to do. We would meet, but no one would promise anything to one another.

We would meet in order to weave a fragmentary narrative, set in a ballroom. We would talk about people who gave up on their ideas, who failed to create anything, who failed to build anything, who failed to complete anything, and thus their world was filled up with apathy. We did believe that all people die with music in their heads; that when everything is distant (people, landscapes, memories), there is still music inside. Late at night, we knew not what to do.”

— blitz theater group