Nocturnal Wanderer

NOCTURNAL WANDERER is Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian's haunting and dreamlike mystery.

In the play, a man walking the streets of urban China in the middle of the night is confronted by a prostitute, a homeless man, and a thief. When the prostitute is found murdered, the blame shifts to the man, a nocturnal wanderer. In the fervid internal monologues of the play, the wanderer wrestles with his feelings, his responses to outside forces, and his search for peace within a violent world.

"Nocturnal Wanderer is not a story, but a dream. It is a dream about restlessness, isolation, brutality, and blame," says director Paul "Spike" Wilson, a Pitt doctoral student in theatre and performance studies. Wilson was attracted to Xingjian's work because of its strong connection to Zen Buddhism and its unabashed exploration of the nature of violence. "This is a play that presents something inescapable," Wilson says, "in a way in which we have no choice but to respond on a personal level. You are not audience, but eyewitness, perhaps corroborator, of a human state."

To view PRODUCTION PHOTOS, please click on the poster below.