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Brighton's White Night

Royal Pavilion at nightThe night the clocks went back, Brighton home to England's largest cultural festival  hosted the latest in its series of one-off nocturnal jamborees.  Taking a spontaneous tour of the city, with nothing pre-booked or pre-planned, FringeGuru's Mathilda Gregory finds out just what makes White Night special.

At the Alternative Village Fete, science buff Richard Robinson explains how, if we all try and guess the number of sweets in the jar, individually we might all get it wrong… but overall, averaged out, we will get it right. And that’s what White Night is like. Individually, we’ll all stumble around, getting disorientated, feeling like we’re missing all the things we really want to see, but overall we – the audience – all get to be a part of it.

Ostensibly offering a chance to ‘do something different in the middle of the night’, White Night – the free arts festival that takes place in Brighton on the night the clocks go back – is an overwhelming experience. With estimated attendance at 40,000, there’s both too much going on (it’s impossible to see it all) and not enough (long queues and lots of waiting around.)

From the fete, I walk up to Pavilion Gardens and encounter Touch Me: a home-made electrical device that responds when its brightly-lit buttons are pressed. It’s about how we interact with technology, apparently. Insofar as anything can 'be about' the very thing it literally is. But it looks great, and the crowd are having a lot of fun with it. Meanwhile, outside the library in Jubilee Square a projection of the events by Beatabet called Metahub is beginning. It’s going to project bits of film from all over White Night, which should be fascinating, but nothing much is happening just yet at 6pm.

I head down to the Sealife Centre. It’s packed. The Sealife Centre is a pricey attraction, so just the fact it is open for free is quite a draw. In the amphitheatre, at the heart of the building, there’s an aquatic documentary showing as part of Underwater Utopias. But most people seem more interested in observing the under waterworld first-hand, in the Centre’s regular exhibits. It’s a typical of a type of White Night event, where something quite specific doesn’t really gel when presented to a general, passing audience.

Starting to get frustrated, I hit the Red Roaster café for a pick-me-up, and catch the end of a charming talk by Hugh Warwick called Way of the Hedgehog. (There are also café talks going on all night at the Marwood and Moska). This feels genuinely quirky and lovely. It’s wonderful to hear a joyful and informative little piece about hedgehogs presented to an appreciative crowd.

Enjoying White Night
"White Night works best when it's a big arty party... to enjoy it you have to see yourself, not as a punter, but as part of a swirling happening."
It’s also wonderful to buy coffee and cake late at night in Brighton, a city whose nightlife is very focussed on alcohol. In fact, one of White Night’s biggest problems is that it clashes with Brighton’s Saturday night crowd on the weekend closest to Halloween, leaving the city under pressure from different groups with different agendas. A lot of people complained about the drunkenness of revellers intruding on White Night events; and I, more than once, mistook drunken people in elaborate Halloween fancy dress for performance artists.

Next I join the queue for NeverEnding Stories at Upstairs at the 3 and 10. Time and space restrictions have obviously governed some aspects of the piece; pressed for time, we bustle in and stand up for the show. It’s hard to concentrate on the cute, funny performance without the chance to take a seat and catch my breath. But I love that Otherplace Productions have gone for full-on fantasy and theatricality, with their offering complete with papier mache costumes. It’s a real achievement to genuinely carve out another world with very little time, space or money; yet the first half of the show does this with ease. The second part of this show is a poetry reading. It’s chilling and full of spooky energy, but the overcrowding in the room is a real problem.

Perhaps smaller, impromptu things work better with the restrictions of White Night. A real highlight was an encounter with Miss High Leg Kick’s Promettes, who did nothing more than occupy a corner of Steine Gardens and encourage people to join them in catwalk struts to disco music.

I whizz through the pretty Return to Eden light show at Victoria Gardens (where the message about making wishes is sweet, but feels like something I’ve seen a lot of before), and end up at the Phoenix Gallery’s Like Shadows: A Celebration of Shyness. The neat twist here is that this is a series of interactive performances that welcome people who don’t want to participate. I’m not sure if there were many such people out on White Night, but it’s a superb idea. As ever, I see fragments: a man in a room full of AV equipment is dancing. In another, a friendly woman chats away while a film of her face, supposedly showing her real emotions, is projected behind her. The audience do their best to ignore her obvious anger staring us down over her shoulder. This piece is quite amazing, and I would love to encounter it again when there were fewer competing distractions.

Expect The Unexpected
"High on a balcony, two drag Dolly Partons are blasting 9 to 5 down to a euphoric crowd, who are dancing all over the road weaving around buses and taxis."
The Basement is offering Heaven and Hell. A chance to experience the ‘perpetual bliss’ of heaven, by building a little-tent like den, or go to the ‘eternal torment’ of hell. I can’t help thinking that the heaven they offer really is just a respite for White Night (and a lot like what you’d been doing if you’d decided to stay home), whereas hell is simply more of the same bombastic performance that is noisy, crowded and hot. Having said that, a lot of the audience bustle through peaceful, staid ‘heaven’, far more interested in getting front row seats in ‘hell’.

As I emerge from Hell the Bike To The Future Bike Train rushes past, lit up and pumping out pop music. Everyone cheers.

The Lighthouse is showing Subveillance, a series of works about CCTV and surveillance. When I’m there, it’s a documentary about Facebook. It’s odd that while this evening, the atmosphere is 'anything goes', this still feels incongruous. A documentary presented in straightforward way, however absorbing, simply isn’t very White Night.

Then the Dome bar is so packed I have to skip Shambush, which is a real shame; and a little later, I’m too late for SHOEtopia at The Marlborough. After two misses in a row I’m feeling like I haven’t quite ‘got’ White Night, and start to head home.

I turn the corner onto North Street and the road is swamped with people. I’ve inadvertently ended up in joyous Dollytopia. The mood is amazing. There’s nothing to it really, but it is definitely the magical hit of the evening. High on a balcony, two drag Dolly Partons are blasting 9 to 5 down to a euphoric crowd, who are dancing all over the road weaving around buses and taxis.

Because White Night works best when it’s a big arty party. To enjoy it you have to see yourself, not as a punter, but as part of a swirling arts happening. The forty events are really just one giant piece. And you can’t watch it, it’s too big; you just have to be part of it.


We'll be expanding our coverage from Brighton over the coming months, and we'll once again be extensively reviewing the Brighton Fringe in May.  We hope we've whetted your appetite with this special feature.

Image of the Royal Pavilion Copyright © Elaine Morgan, modified by FringeGuru (see original) and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

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