Simon Starling: At Twilight

At Twilight is an ambitious new project by Simon Starling, developed in collaboration with theatre director Graham Eatough, which revolves around a W.B. Yeats play, “At the Hawk’s Well.” Imagined as a play, the project first takes form as an exhibition, presenting the rich array of associations and remarkable stories. The project will include live performances of At Twilight: A play for two actors, three musicians, one dancer, eight masks (and a donkey costume).

The original play was written by Yeats while working with poet Ezra Pound and was inspired by traditional Japanese “Noh” theatre. It was performed in April 1916 in what Starling describes as “an odd cross-cultural mash-up in an English garden, at a traumatic moment in European history,” and is a fusion of Irish folklore and what Yeats then saw as an exciting new possibility for theatre.

At Twilight encapsulates this dynamic discourse between tradition and the avant-garde, in a kind of absurd, dramatised tussle between history, mythology and modernism. The inventions and innovations of modernism have long been a source of interest for Starling, as has the trans-national movement of the people and ideas that shaped cultural history.

For more information and booking details please visit: www.thecommonguild.org.uk

At Twilight is commissioned by The Common Guild in collaboration with the Japan Society, New York.

Script by Simon Starling and Graham Eatough
Directed by Graham Eatough
Choreography by Javier De Frutos and Scottish Ballet
Music by Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society
Costumes made by Kumi Sakurai and Atelier Hinode Tokyo, Japan
Masks made by Yasuo Miichi, Osaka, Japan
Blast trees made by Simon Hopkins/Scott Associates Sculpture and Design, Glasgow.

Project supported by:
Creative Scotland
Outset Scotland
Sylvia Waddilove Foundation
Japan Society

With thanks to Scottish Ballet and the National Trust for Scotland

The Common Guild is supported by:
Creative Scotland
Glasgow City Council

With thanks to our Programme Supporters: Alistair Duff, Susan Duff, Emma and Fred Goltz.