Night-Shows
‘What is Kilometer Zero? But where is it? Who is it? Is it you?’ The woman was asking the question in a wine cellar in Paris. It was toward the end of one of our night-shows. On stage a writer with a pale bald head and round glasses was reading something about an orange rolling down a flight of steps. In the back was an art exhibition of books cut to ribbons. They were pouring themselves from their spines ...
The night-shows started as cabaret-style venue events, where off the back of the magazine platform, we would invite writers to come and read, performers to perform, bands to play, fire-eaters to eat fire and so on. To begin with we were hosting these night-shows in sypathetic Paris bars — generally places with basements where we could be wild and dark. The bar got the drinks revenue, and we got to run our dog and pony show. But as we entered the art squat scene, possibilities started opening up and forking simultaneously on numerous fronts. The scale and ambition of the night-shows took off, involving far more elaborate stages as we obsessively reconfigured and recreated the performance space. Art shows and installations became more prominent, and the already anarchic open mic sesssions became sprawling beasts in the Paris night. They were nothing if not memorable. I guess we became hipper and more underground. We were also able to start running our own bar, which began to bring in a little revenue, as well as a lot of divisive and nefarious squat politics. Pennies do odd things to erstwhile penniless bohemian utopias.
The night-shows offered a nurturing ground for what was to become Kilometer Zero Theatre. They have also been on tour in their own right, encompassing Prague, Amsterdam, London and New York.
View a rough chronology of Kilometer Zero night-shows
