Introducing: Dark Land Light House, Old Vic

Bristol’s Sleepdogs present this visceral sci-fi horror, set in the depths of space and drawing on classic sci-fi such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien and Solaris.

There is a Dark Land in the depths of space. Ships are drawn to it like moths to a flame, where they are consumed, destroyed. A lighthouse orbits the Dark Land, and one Teller Ghent is its lone keeper. Teller’s only company is a sentient computer with a taste for the poetic – and a host of terrible visions from the end of the universe. Teller is afraid. But she is never giving up.

Commissioned by Bristol Old Vic Ferment and produced by BOV associates MAYK (they of the incomparable Mayfest), the show also features an all-enveloping soundtrack inspired by the atmospheric minimalism of musicians Ben Frost and Richard Skelton.

Here’s writer Timothy X Atack to tell us more.

Science fiction doesn’t get done often in the theatre. If it is, it’s very often tackled as a kind of retro joke; bacofoil, bleepy sounds, rubber masks. And sure, from the start we wanted our own contribution Dark Land Light House to be unashamedly generic, but sci-fi is such a broad church for us. We’re both incorrigible geeks for Doctor Who , in all its iterations – a show that over the years has nicked every conceivable trope of sci-fi from H.G. Wells to China Miéville, mixing it up with comedy, gothic horror and cosmic angst.

We wanted our story to have something of that ‘magpie’ quality, building on universes that people might already feel familiar with. In fact, there’s a Doctor Who story from the 1970s which, like ours, is also set on a lighthouse (although one on the south coast of England, not in deep space) and features the TARDIS companions battling a kind of mobile glowing blancmange with a voice like a pissed-off RSC extra. Which, I’m sorry to say, we don’t have in our show. We’re trying to take more cues from the rusting, atomised landscapes of Blade Runner and Stalker.

Because sci-fi is such a good way of telling relatable stories. We figure that we all feel adrift sometimes, that the world is moving fast and we’re always catching up… that’s kind of almost a platitude for modern humans. The idea was that in Dark Land Light House we’d invite people to consider loneliness and fortitude, feeling terribly small in an expanding cosmos – and sci-fi lets us tackle that using explosions, airlocks, string orchestras, sentient computers, glitches, ghosts, distant pianos, huge beams of shaky light, and jokes about wonky technology.

Being a sci-fi story allowed us to try out some other things in the theatre, too. One decision we made very early on in R&D was that our actors would be permanently on microphone, because they needed headsets to communicate with the lighthouse computer (and between themselves for a short while, before everything goes horribly wrong.)

On a very basic level this allows us to turn everything UP – to make the sounds, music, lighting and projection so much more involving and immersive and so, we hope, to really bring our audiences into our world. There is of course great craft and skill in performing above and within a noisy piece of theatre with voice alone – but sometimes you want a different tone, and from time to time we’re able to have our actors feel so much smaller and quieter in the dark.

We’re heading into the second week of our run at Bristol Old Vic Studio now (the final Bristol Old Vic production in the space before it’s closed for the refurbishment) and we’ve been hearing that people are enjoying being taken to the end of the universe and back, that they are connecting with the human at the heart of it, that it provokes discussion and further ideas… which is a relief to us.

The risk with sci-fi is always that any invented or modified jargon makes it feel frivolous or just plain stupid. In that respect we’ve probably taken our biggest cue from the best-known example of all: the original Star Wars, a film which is a masterpiece in the revealing of unfamiliar information in a confident, unabashed way.

George Lucas never tells you what the Kessel Run is, or has someone explain the nature of a servo droid at length, or even tell you how Darth Vader acquired his mask (yeah, sure, he spoiled that later. Moving on…) He just has his characters say stuff in passing as part of their everyday lives. It’s not just the jargon – when Luke Skywalker shows up some 20 minutes into the film, the ONLY thing that tells you he’s our hero is the incidental music. Watch it (yet) again: it’s the music and the music alone.

So, we’ve tried to use our original music to do something similar in Dark Land Light House. It underscores in the way a Hollywood film might. It suggests, undermines, emphasises, pauses. With co-composer Paul Nash we began with inspirations from the unsettling, graphic rattle of Ben Frost or the see-sawing strings of Richard Skelton… and much of that remains, but influences from Clint Mansell’s brilliant, quietly epic scores for Moon and Requiem For A Dream have also crept in.

Yeah, sure, it’s ‘stealing’, but we’ve always done that. Stories aren’t told in a vacuum. We genuinely hope you’ll find some of Dark Land Light House familiar. Because the idea is when it all starts to fall away, when the nightmares begin, you’ll really really need something to cling on to… (*evil laughter.*)

Dark Land Light House continues at Bristol Old Vic until Saturday, April 30. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/darkland.html