Night Fires 2023

Pre-show begins 20 minutes before the start of each performance.

Night Fires is a magical Winter Solstice dream play which first appeared on the scene forty-one years ago. With cast of new performers and “old-timers,” this year’s production conjures, as always, an entirely new story under the direction of creator Marianne Lust.

Traditional winter solstice rituals were always about a returning of the light, a “return” brought about only by a journey first through a close and life-giving darkness. This year’s play conjures the story of a contemporary young person living in what might be called a time of “sterile darkness” who suddenly finds herself in a mysterious dark wood where she’s welcomed by Druid-like folk from another time. In the fruitful darkness of their realm she journeys into the light of a complicated and interesting new day, bringing with her from that mythical realm a new “light”.

Poems by such magnificent poets as Naomi Shihab Nye, William Stafford, Jane Hirshfield, Lucille Clifton, Rumi, Hafez and Coleman Barks help weave part of the magical web, accompanied by contemporary folk and blues music, as well as traditional songs from Italy, Estonia, Norway, the former Yugoslavia and our own country.

“A heartfelt pageant of singing, dancing, storytelling, chanting and visual magic…A liturgy of universality (with) an almost sacramental power…afterward, audience members wish they could remember all those marvelous poems and songs and store them up like firewood for cold winter nights…People come as spectators and leave as members of a community.”

-Rutland Herald