That Night follows Day

“You tell us when to sit down and when to stand up. You tell us when to move and when to stay still for a moment. You tell us when we’re allowed to get up from the table. You teach us to say ‘please.’ And you teach us to say ‘thank you.’ You teach us how to look nice and clean. You explain to us that there are bad people in the world. That monsters don’t really exist. That words are nothing but words.” THAT NIGHT FOLLOWS DAY turns the world upside down: A choir of children between the ages of 8 and 14 takes center stage. They have only recently been thrown into life, and immediately they encounter rules and values there. But the children turn the tables. They reverse statements, reject them, and rephrase them. And the longer you listen to this canon of values with the sender reversed, the more audibly an unspoken “Why?” takes the stage: the questioning of what is—and could just as easily be different! Deeply moving and extraordinarily funny. THAT NIGHT FOLLOWS DAY was first produced in 2007 by Victoria Deluxe in Ghent, Belgium, and has since been performed in many countries and languages. For the Cologne premiere, the text is being updated for a group of Cologne children. Tim Etchells is an internationally renowned author, director, and artist. He became particularly well-known as the director of the performance group Forced Entertainment.