OBSERVER: The Nightline
n Never having rung in to a nightline, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
From the first steps via an exterior four level set of stairs, after cold, firm instructions from a sort of strict principal “concierge”, door entry permitted full viewing of a space with 40 separate round tables.
Each had its own tightly focussed light, self dial telephone and self select eight point channel input.
Sparse instructions, like no talk permitted, were all in mime. Approximately 40 minutes of solitude with only your selection of incoming conversations.
This was a powerful experience, wherein apart from the anonymous, at times almost night ramblings of whomever I dialled in to, there was nothing. Those streams of at times almost semi consciousness purveyed sadness, self deprecation, boredom, amusement, emptiness, longing …
Nothing to focus on but the voice at the other end of a phone line stimulated my own images of the callers – sad reflectives, sardonically amused, aged and overwhelmed, plagued with insomnia, broken biological sleep patterned shift workers, exhausted mums.
The bleakest sentence of all was “It’s me again …” I was listening to the voice of someone who was so in need of a human voice that they obviously rang in many, many times – the nightline was their society …
“It’s good to talk” was a repeated sentence.
“Why am I awake?” another. Despite my outside thoughts of sadness within callers, there was mostly a suggestion of a sort of acceptance and calmness about their being able to share thoughts with someone.
A paradoxical caller was a solo flautist – lovely music being played but perhaps the only listeners for the sounds were via the Nightline.
Occasionally alien light flashes and stormy weather sounds burst intrusively into “our” precious time – an outside world was there, but not for these callers in the night.
Created by celebrated documentary maker Roslyn Oades and award winning sound artist Bob Scott with collaborators, this is unusual, compelling, immersive theatre which will open your mind to a different concept of human “sustainability”.
Until August 29, Bagging Room, Malthouse
Tickets from $38 Malthouse box office
Review by Maggie Morrison
Photo: Simon Fazio