The Last Night of the Deer

Stories

The Last Night of the Deer

By Jānis Balodis og Nahuel Cano (LV/AR)

Duration: 70 min

Welcome to a piece that lingers between a spoken word concert and storytelling about a roadtrip and a deer crash, moving towards a collective dancing moment at the end.

+ Possible triggers

The performance is part of the Bastard festival 2023, curated by “The Shake Down” project teenage curators in partnership with New Theatre Institute of Latvia⁠⁠ and with the support of EEA Grants.

Last Night of the Deer is a show by Jānis Balodis and Nahuel Cano, telling the story of a roadtrip and a deer crash in a snow storm. It is a beautiful live music, theatre and spoken word performance. The piece lingers between a spoken word concert and storytelling, moving towards a collective dancing moment at the end.

In December 2021, Nahuel Cano was traveling from Amsterdam to Riga. Jānis Balodis picked him up from a ferry in Klaipeda. They were driving. It was late in the evening, already dark, and a severe snow storm started right after they left Klaipeda. They decided to take a smaller road, and there they hit a deer.

The Last Night of the Deer is a story about that one December evening when they visited Lidl, refuelled LPG in Viada and met an anthropologist, hit the deer, crushed a skull, got covered with blood and feces, were running from dogs, and were barely accepted in a taxi. It is a (true) story about all-too-human forests and the more-than-human spirits that inhabit it.

In its depth this performance is based on frustration with our anthropocentric worldview (=the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity in the universe). The performance takes us on a road trip in the intermediary space somewhere between the human and non-human. The work is very much inspired by anthropologist Eduardo Kohn, and his work “How Forests Think”. This text seeks to prove and understand the ways in which the semiotic/thinking process takes place outside the human environment.

Medvirkende

Idea, direction:	Jānis Balodis and Nahuel Cano
Producer:	Ieva Briede
Light advice:	Dina Beināre
Co-produced by:	The International festival of Contemporary Theatre HOMO NOVUS and ANTI - contemporary arts festival
Implemented as part of ACT:	Art Climate, Transition project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the EU
Supported by:	This event is supported by the EEA Grants programme “Local Development, Poverty Reduction, and Cultural Cooperation”