In March last year, Taipei-based Riverbed Theatre (河床劇團) took over the National Experimental Theater for The First Time I Walked on the Moon (當我踏上月球), a production inspired by the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Their latest production, Soft lights for sleepless nights (無眠夜的微光), was also inspired by space: the space for imagination as well as outer space; a space created by German composer Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film, Interstellar.
The 21-year-old Riverbed image-based theater of the subconscious is all about imagination and adventure, something the company has in common with the 62-year-old Zimmer, head of the film music division of DreamWorks studio, whom it cites as saying: “What’s the point of getting up in the morning unless you’re gonna have an adventure? As the moments of our life are ticking away you have to be aware that it needs to be an adventure.”
Zimmer is known for integrating electronic music with traditional orchestrations to create sweeping soundscapes that elevate the dramatic action of the films he has worked on.
Photo courtesy of Riverbed Theatre
Riverbed says that Zimmer has “not only altered the manner in which we experience movies but also the way in which we experience life, encouraging us to dream beyond the ordinary, to live our own lives with grand orchestral crescendos.”
Artistic director Craig Quintero and the Riverbed team have used the Interstellar score as the script for this 50-minute Soft lights for sleepless nights, developing a new world and a new cast of characters for what they describe as “a journey into the shadows of our lives.”
However, while Zimmer’s oeuvre was the original catalyst for the show, Riverbed has also been inspired by a much more down to Earth reality: the violent suppression of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong in recent months.
While Riverbed describes Soft lights for sleepless nights as “a meditation on the human experience” and a new world of possibilities, they have also added a final citation: Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ 1947 poem Do not go gentle into that good night: “Do not go gentle into that good night … rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
The production team includes fashion designers David Hsu (徐敏榜), Ra Thomson, Kevin Wang (王思豪) and Tseng Tzu-hui (曾慈惠); Riverbed cofounder/sculptor/painter Carl Johnson for the stage design, video artist Chen Yi-xuan (陳怡瑄) and lighting designer Chiang Chi-yang (江佶洋).
The six-member cast of actors and dancers is led by film star Ning Chang (張甯) and features Dan Chang (張佳芝) and Hsu Jia-ling (許家玲), who were in The First Time I Walked on the Moon; along with Yu Yu-hsin (游育歆), Wu Sz-jui (吳思瑞) and Lin Chih-jung (林智容).
The show runs 50 minutes with no intermission.
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