The Long Now

By Sam Burnside

Directed and Designed by Michael Poynor

An ULSTER THEATRE COMPANY Production

‘Memory is general to all, while memories are unique to each of us. Memory is shared, but my memories are mine, warmed or cooled, sweetened or embittered with time’s passing.

I remember as a child being a passenger in a big black car on one dark evening. I remember sitting low in the front passenger seat, looking up and out through the windscreen, the passing world of tree tops and cloud-filled sky being cut like scenes in a film with that mesmeric rhythm of the windscreen wipers.

Do I remember, or do I imagine the sound of the wipers, the warmth of the car, the smell of the smoke of my mother’s cigarette? I do not know but I imagine I remember the truth of that experience.

It’s the vast swathes of darkness that surround us, there’s the mystery – the forgotten detail, the once-us, a now alien I, negotiating galaxies of nothingness with just as Matthew Arnold said of the distant lighthouse its ‘light gleams and is gone’. This darkness is where writers fumble and blindly finger-feel, wrestling with that wilful, shape-changing thing called self.

This entertainment may or may not be true. Who can say? Co Antrim in the 1950s is a far-off place. Yet, this is the honest product of a writer closing his eyes and thrusting his hand into the bran tub of time and memory and hoping … ’ (Sam Burnside)

With two actors, projections, live music underscore and a soundscaped chorus, we explore one man’s memories …

This production is being filmed for digital release in late 2020/early 2021