You feed us. You wash us. You dress us. You sing to us. You watch us when we are sleeping. You explain to us the different causes of illness and the different causes of war. You whisper when you think we can't hear. You explain to us that night follows day.
That Night Follows Day begins from Etchells' text collecting factual observations concerning the ways in which the adult world shapes and defines that of young people. The piece uses a cast of children between the ages of 8 and 14 to show how adults project onto children. The director, who is himself the father of two children, brings personalities, events, experiences and life situations to the stage with the cast of 16, creating a miracle. The sea of text, delivered as if from a chorus, never once rings false. (The performance is in Flemish, but Hungarian and English supertitles are projected onto oversized chalkboards.) It contains fragments of the act of bringing up a child.
The Victoria's production can't be described as "children's theatre". In it, the cast sit or stand and speak, simply speak, about us - the adults. Sitting in the audience, one would think it could be us there on stage, after all, not everybody will become a mother or a father, but we were all children. We see the good and the bad as has been passed down from parent to child. We see traumas and mistakes wound around generations like ivy growing up a wall.
Author: Tamás Halász
