Midnight Movie

Written as a piece of autofiction, Eve Leigh’s “Midnight Movie” tells the story of a young woman who suffers from chronic pain. She spends her sleepless nights alone on the Internet, trying to escape reality tab by tab and story by story. The author skillfully combines descriptions of her own condition with stories from various Internet forums. “Midnight Movie” is a text of great sensitivity and poetry and reaches people whose physical absence in the theatre generally remains unquestioned.

Stückemarkt-juror Jackie Sibblies Drury about the text
Eve Leigh dedicates her brilliant play, “Midnight Movie” to “digital ghosts,” a group that includes more of us than we might have imagined before 2020. But Leigh has the prescience of many great artists; in her consideration of illness and pain, of digital community, and of disembodied intimacy, she speaks not only to the current state of our society, but also to the inequity and alienation that have defined the digital age long before COVID-19.
The text of the play is both precise and collaborative. It asks, gently, implicitly, for the artists and audience to create the performance personally, sensorily, and almost intuitively. What’s more, the play demands to be presented inclusively, so it can be experienced by everyone, regardless of ability. It’s a rare and generous thing to be so trusting. It’s perhaps rarer to find spaces like “Midnight Movie” where we might consider our humanity when so many of us – physically, metaphorically, or very decidedly Not metaphorically – lack the ability to see “the difference between ‘real life’ and a screen.”