Midnight Movie

Eve Leigh’s autobiographical play Midnight Movie centers on a young woman living with chronic pain. Through countless sleepless nights, she wanders alone across the internet, trying to escape reality by clicking through page after page and reading story after story. In the play, Leigh deftly interweaves descriptions of her own condition with stories drawn from a range of online forums. Written in language that is at once incisive and poetic, Midnight Movie also turns its attention to those who are so often absent from the theatre.

As both a woman writer and a disabled person, Leigh searches for bodily truths in these humorous, ghostly, and sorrowful stories from the internet. Midnight Movie is a kind of One Thousand and One Nights for the digital age. If its protagonist is Scheherazade, then her unreliable body and unnameable pain become the capricious and tyrannical king: depriving her of sleep and compelling her to pass the hours by moving from one webpage to another. When we can no longer draw a clear boundary between the digital body and the physical body, storytelling itself seems to become endless. As the protagonist roams the internet, she generates ever-new doubles, webpages, stories, and sleepless nights within an ongoing chain of seeing and being seen, reality and virtuality, signifier and signified.

This production brings Deaf and hearing performers together in a collaborative process, with the aim of creating an inclusive theatrical experience. While leading integrated Deaf-hearing workshops and learning sign language, I became increasingly aware of the specific qualities of sign language and of its cross-modal modes of translation in working with text—from written language into gestural language. The symbolic and iconic dimensions of sign language, and the ways in which signing can both accompany and estrange spoken performance, greatly enriched our exploration of the text.

The production employs multiple modes of communication, including spoken language, different styles of sign language, physical movement, surtitles, and audio description. Through photographs, live video, and prerecorded moving images, it brings to the stage the work’s underlying reflections on bodily vulnerability and bodily boundlessness.

The production originated in the Berliner Theatertreffen Stückemarkt program and received substantial support from the Goethe-Institut China. On May 1–2, 2021, a Stückemarkt workshop devoted to Midnight Movie was held at the Goethe-Institut. Chinese directors and dramaturgs were invited to exchange ideas with the playwright, Eve Leigh, and subsequently submitted staging proposals for the work. My proposal was selected from among the submissions, leading to the production’s first presentation on November 20–21 at the Cultural and Education Section of the German Consulate General in Shanghai.

Performance history

November 20–21, 2021, 7:30 PM
Cultural and Education Section of the German Consulate General, Shanghai
November 21 performance followed by a post-show discussion

August 22, 2022, 7:30 PM
Hangzhou Xixi Arts Festival
Followed by a post-show discussion

September 16–17, 2022, 7:30 PM
DAWA Accessible Arts Festival, Shanghai

December 17–18, 2022, 7:30 PM
Guilin Arts Festival, Guangxi

June 20–21, 2023, 7:30 PM
Aranya International Arts Festival

艾娃·莱恩（Eve Leigh）的自传性作品《午夜电影》聚焦一个深受慢性疼痛困扰的年轻女性。在多少个不眠之夜，她孤独地在互联网上游荡，试图靠点击一个个网页、阅读一个又一个故事来逃避现实。在剧中，编剧巧妙地将对自身病情的描述与来自多家网络论坛的故事结合在了一起。《午夜电影》以敏锐而富有诗意的文字，也关注到了那些通常缺席于戏剧剧场的人。

作为女性作家和残障人士，艾娃·莱恩在这些谐谑、鬼魅又悲伤的网络故事中寻找关于肉身的真相（bodily truths）。《午夜电影》是网络时代的“一千零一夜”，如果主人公是山鲁佐德，那么不可靠的身体和无以名状的病痛则是喜怒无常、暴虐成性的王，它剥夺了她的睡眠，使得她不得不在一个又一个网页之中打发时间。当我们无法划出数字身体和真实身体的界限，这样的讲述似乎也变得没有尽头，主人公在因特网上漫游，在看与被看，真实和虚拟，能指和所指的链条之中不断生成新的分身、新的网页、新的故事、新的不眠之夜……
本次演出邀请聋听演员共同创作，旨在营造一个具有包容性的剧场体验。”在带领聋听融合工作坊和学习手语的过程,我感受到手语的特点以及它在处理文本时候的跨符码翻译特征（从文字到手势语言），手势语言的象征性和图示性对口语表演的配合与间离，大大丰富了对文本的挖掘。
演出将使用口语、不同风格的手语、肢体语言以及字幕和语音提示等多种交流形式，并通过照片、实时和预录的影像等媒介，将作品中隐藏的关于身体脆弱和无限的讨论在表演中展现出来。

这部作品脱胎于柏林戏剧节·剧本市场计划，得到中国歌德学院的大力支持：2021年5月1、2日，针对《午夜电影》的“剧本市场”工作坊在歌德学院举办，中国导演和戏剧构作受邀与《午夜电影》作者艾娃·莱恩展开了交流，并在工作坊后递交了针对剧目的排演方案。我的方案在众多申请中脱颖而出，得以于11月20/21日在德国驻上海总领事馆文化教育处首次呈现。

历次演出信息：

时间：2021年11月20/21日（21日含演后谈），19:30
地点：德国驻上海总领事馆文化教育处

时间：2022年8月22日（含演后谈），19:30
地点：杭州西戏艺术节

时间：2022年9月16/17日（两场），19:30
地点：上海 dawa无障碍艺术节

时间：2022年12月17/18日（两场），19:30
地点：广西桂林艺术节