The Last Night of the World (DSE) (La dernière nuit du monde)

The world is on the brink of major changes: the night as a period of rest for humans and animals is being abolished. From now on, there will be 24 hours of activity in the working and business world. Everyone takes a short individual time window for sleeping. Thanks to a new medication, this only lasts 45 minutes. After three-quarters of an hour of sleep, people feel as rested as they normally would after seven or eight hours of nighttime rest. Each person thus has nearly twice as long an active lifespan, as they no longer need to sleep as much. They can achieve almost twice as much. The productivity of society, indeed of all humanity, grows immensely, as there are no longer any time differences to consider. What a revolution! Gabor, a protagonist of this turning point, must travel to the other end of the world on the last proper night before the introduction of the day without night to accompany the abolition there. His wife Lou, who was injured during violent riots of the "Black Night Movement" against this societal transformation, is in the hospital and asks her husband to stay. Nevertheless, Gabor flies. Thousands of kilometers away from her, he receives a call from the hospital, urging him to come immediately if he wants to see Lou alive. But due to the global system change, no flights are available on the "last night." However, Gabor pays a high price for his belief in progress not only in his relationship. The whole world is changing under the dictate of relentless growth and ever-increasing productivity, which attempts to completely undermine the laws of nature. The highly renowned and award-winning author Laurent Gaudé from France has long since thoroughly thought through common procedures and thought experiments from economics, medicine, and society. His vision of the future is certainly technically conceivable. But Gaudé questions the impact on humanity and nature and discusses whether everything that scientific research could enable must actually be implemented. "The Last Night of the World" is the winning piece of the third drama competition "Science & Theatre" and will have its German-language premiere at the Science Dome of the experimenta. Dr. Mirjam Meuser, the curator of the "Science & Theatre" festival, said in her laudation: "In five acts, Gabor explores in leaps through time the tragic downfall to the gods of capitalism and its intrinsic motivation to transform humans into a working machine that can be deployed around the clock... 'The Last Night of the World' poetically and parabolically investigates what happens to us when we produce without pause for 24 hours and drive the exploitation of ourselves and nature to the absolute."