A is for Apothecary
Welcome.
Navigate the pages on the right to peruse past productions, or press HERE to view a chronicle of (relatively) current affairs.
from Darwinii: The Comeuppance of Man
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If you’ve arrived here by accident (?) and are wondering, read on, it goes something like this…
A NIGHTJAR is a ground roosting, insectivorous, nocturnal bird, a nighthawk or whip-poor-will. AN APOTHECARY is an old pharmacy on the corner, or one who measures out the dosages there. Shelves stacked to the ceiling with jars full of powders, tonics, medicaments. A light on in the back late into the night. Moths about the bare bulb, and the nighthawks churring high above. THE NIGHTJAR was once considered an ill-omen. But THE APOTHECARY is not superstitious, the new magician of a bygone age, healing through faith in the new religion. NIGHTJAR APOTHECARY is an orbiting spacecraft, with the distinctive white bars on its wings, the drooping antenna-like whiskers astride the moth-port, trolling for signs of intelligent life…
It’s the marriage of Chemistry with Natural History, consecrated with Electricity, producing a rare form of interstellar* theatrical distillate.
*There is some rocket science involved.
Nightjar Apothecary works are forays into the cluttered back alleys of the history and philosophy of western science, where ricocheting facts are wrapped in subtle fictions (to help them go down easier) and delivered efficiently by quirky narrator-guides who carry audiences along for a stimulating ride, an inquiry into what makes us tick (as well as what might make us sick, and the attending belief that whatever it may be we’ll find a cure in time).
Nightjar Apothecary holds the age-old mirror up to nature, allowing audiences an opportunity to reflect upon fundamental practices and modes of thinking that underlie everyday life in the 21st century. But this mirror, salvaged from a shuttered fun-house by the sea, shows as well a parallel world of what might have been, or what yet could be, and through the unsilvered cracks the small circle of spectators witnesses a performer tangling with the roots of theatre, attempting to tap its potential as a regenerative social art.
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GUARANTEE
NIGHTJAR APOTHECARY is committed to providing the quality salves, nostrums, and remedial agents you have come to expect from the nation’s leading purveyor of low-cost, non-invasive, rational amusements. Hundreds have experienced the relief from symptoms of Whooping Cough, Spasmodic Croup, Asthma, Catarrh, Diptheria, Dropsy, effects of the Evil Eye, Somnambulism, Alienation, Schizophrenia, and The Bronchial Complications of Scarlet Fever and Measles through exposure to our patented formulas. We know you and your family have come to rely on us, and we are not about to abuse that trust. **We test everything on ourselves** So you can feel confident when you open the door to this medicine cabinet that we stand behind everything in here.
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“But about the nightjar; though ugly, he does a lot of good work with that big mouth of his by flying about in the dark catching flies… A naturalist has made a very careful study of him… In one bird, for instance, he found…
15 June chafers.
67 Swift moths.
40 Turning Dart moths.
8 Great Yellow Underwing moths.
Some meal that! How many? 130, isn’t it?”
—Robert Baden-Powel
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Caprimulgus minor Americanus (Caprimulgus vociferus)
The Indians say these Birds were never known ‘till a great massacre was made of their countryfolks by the English, and that they are the Souls or departed Spirits of the massacred Indians. Abundance of people here look upon them as Birds of ill omen, and are very melancholy if one of them happens to light upon their house, or near their door, and set up his cry (as they will sometimes upon the very threshold) for they verily believe one of the family will die very soon after.
—Mark Catesby (1683-1749), The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands: containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects, and plants. Vol I. (1754)
