By the standards of experimental theatre, eight hours is puny stuff. Probably the longest play to appear on the British stage was Neil Oram’s 22-hour hippy odyssey, The Warp.
Ken Campbell’s 1979 production included two meal breaks and a 2.30am interval as it veered from medieval Bavaria to an alien abduction in Bront? country.
A revival in the 1990s ran to 30 hours as the cast slipped behind schedule. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one reviewer described it as “a badly-structured, verbose, drug-fuelled ramble”.
Even this could not come close to the record set by the American absurdist visionary Robert Wilson. His 1972 production of KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE, in the Iranian town of Shiraz, lasted for seven days and seven nights, and involved 500 actors. It has not been restaged since.
Some devotees of impro theatre insist that long performances are an integral part of the creative process. The Canadian Dana Andersen began the trend with gruelling 53-hour shows in Edmonton, Alberta. He believes that after about 30 hours, exhaustion sends performers “through the stargate”, destroying inhibitions and creating a new mental state. “You start getting things with such ease, it’s like the point when you’ve cracked learning an instrument,” he explained.