Hannah Boutilier as Barbara Kepler and Clayton Jevne as Johannes Kepler in A Short History of Night

Credit: Thiago Silva

Lights Out

Inconnu gives us A Short History of Night

Sometimes, old advice is the best advice. Take, for example, the age-old suggestion to sleep on it when faced with a quandary. It’s a recommendation that director Graham McDonald took to heart when figuring out how to approach Theatre Inconnu’s latest show, a production of John Mighton’s (Half Life) Governor General Award-winning play, A Short History of Night. The play—which Mighton penned in 1992 and was first mounted by Vancouver’s Dark Horse Theatre (co-founded by Dark Horse Books owner Robert Garfat)—examines some of the key scientific advances of the Renaissance period, particularly those of astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.

“I thought about it for a long time and I went to bed and I had a dream about it and that made the most sense,” says McDonald. “It was just my mind taking all of the information I had—I’d been doing a lot of reading on it—and just making my mind look at it and going, ‘Ah, that makes sense.’ I was trying too hard to get in all this stuff, but I don’t have to worry about that. I just have to make the characters as real as possible and as interesting as possible.”

True, Mighton—who is a mathematician as well as a playwright—is known for his ability to weave theatre with science with sometimes head-scratching results. And McDonald does admit that the play is quite different than other offerings he’s directed for Inconnu, such as The Pillowman and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. For one, it’s shorter—90 minutes with an intermission—and the script, as he says, is a bit of a mystery.

“The two key words in the play are ‘short’ and ‘night,’” he says. “As far as history goes, it’s not really a history lesson so much as a history sketch. He just touches on a bunch of little brilliant characters and makes you want to go look up their history.”

While folks shouldn’t expect a full-on accurate history lesson at Short History, they can anticipate some stylish flourishes that are a departure from more minimal shows Inconnu has staged—although McDonald stresses it will retain Inconnu’s trademark minimal approach, “both in our style and working in a small space.” The set is a 12-foot-tall, 24-foot-wide castle (imagine that crammed into Little Fernwood) and also employs the talents of Tim Gosley, whose signature shadow puppets will be appearing in some scenes. Inconnu is also mounting this show to help celebrate the International Year of Astronomy, and members of the Royal Astronomy Society will have a telescope set up in Fernwood Square to do some stargazing after the June 6 performance.

“The astronomers are very excited,” says McDonald. “Last year, we did Copenhagen, a show for the physicists, and this year we’re doing a show for the astronomers. We’re becoming very popular with the sciences.”

Maybe next year it will be biology.

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A Short History of Night
8pm Wed.-Sat. to June 20
2pm Saturday, June 6 & 13
Little Fernwood, 1923 Fernwood
Tickets $10-$12
250-360-0234 • theatreinconnu.com