Nighthawks

Created 1985

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“And it feels like you’ve been sat here all your life, waitin’ for the big chance, the first chance or the last chance. Waitin’ for just about anythin’ I guess. Meantime you’re knee deep in strangers that you never seen before goddamnit and won’t never see again. But somehow it all seems familiar, like the colour of bourbon or the lines on your hand…”

Nighthawks takes its title from an Edward Hopper painting. It is an exploration of more or less mythological territory — the world of American bars constructed in Hopper paintings and genre patterns from movies and literature.

In a silent, minimalist choreography (very much the style of the company’s early pieces), the piece explores sexual identity and our relationship to images from the media. A taped voiceover, first from a man and then from a woman, frames the action throughout. Drawing heavily on a cinematic aesthetics, the setting for the first half of the piece is a bar room, the walls of which open in the second half to reveal a motel room where the repetitive choreographed action continues to unfold.

Images

credits

Conceived and devised by the company.

Performers Huw Chadbourn, Tim Etchells, Richard Lowdon, Susie Williams
Voiceover Tim Etchells, Cathy Naden
Direction Robin Arthur, Cathy Naden
Text Tim Etchells
Design Richard Lowdon, Huw Chadbourn
Lighting Design Richard Lowdon
Soundtrack John Avery

Nighthawks is a Forced Entertainment production.