The Last Night of the World

“Night has always been the kingdom of freedom and fear, an area where boundaries become blurred, where everything changes appearance and meaning in a state of rapture or terror. Night asks questions of our lives and examines our finitude. In fact, in the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the Mesopotamian hero wanted to try and free himself from the cycle of sleep: to stay awake for more than six days in order to become immortal. Centuries later, are we about to succeed where he failed? And if we are, what will we be in the future? An eternal yet exhausted human race? Does night perhaps gaze at us now with great pity, we who have lost the art of sleeping? Is it perhaps time to listen to the voice of night and let it sweep us off our feet?”
LAURENT GAUDÉ

Imagine a world without night. A world where mankind, aided by science, puts an end to its physiological need for sleep. A pill would allow a person to sleep for only 45 minutes without the effect of fatigue. In the “era of the fragmented night” – where everyone chooses when they want to sleep – the stars no longer cradle any dreams, or any silence. Active, furious, relentless life runs through the veins of a joyful and all-powerful humanity. A fantasy for some, a nightmare for others, The last night of the world tackles a theme which is scarely taboo. A 24-hour planet under the fallacious pretext that day is overflowing and that it is therefore time for humans to inhabit time differently.

In this new work with accents of anticipation, Laurent Gaudé and Fabrice Murgia find fertile ground for collaboration.

Creation: 7 July 2021, Festival d’Avignon (FR)
Coproduction: Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles (BE), Théâtre de Namur (BE), MARS-Mons Arts de la Scène (BE), Théâtre de Liège (BE), Central-La Louvière (BE), Théâtres en Dracénie-Draguignan (FR), Théâtre L’Aire Libre-Rennes (FR), CDN de Madrid (ES), Riksteatern (SE) & La Scène National d’Albi (FR)