Robert Charles Johnson Reflects on Creating Bat Night Market

It’s been four months since the premiere of Bat Night Market at the Science Gallery in London, and for Kuang-Yi and me, it was truly uncharted territory. Working with performance within the realm of speculative design allowed us to explore new areas, creating immersive worlds that challenge our understanding of ecology and envision future scientific tools that may soon become reality. 

The hope for Bat Night Market was to immerse the audience in a possible scenario – what if bats became extinct? Could we revive them with science and groundbreaking innovation? Did our prejudice post Covid lead to their extinction?  

To create a piece that embraced such complex questions, we needed to collaborate with a diverse range of scientific experts. Having the Science Gallery and King’s College London as our foundation gave us access to invaluable resources, enabling us to tackle these challenges as multidisciplinary practitioners. 

Key experts like Lucy Di Silvio, a tissue culture engineer, offered real insights into both her technological expertise and the culture surrounding the forefront of cell-based printing technology. This complemented the work of Dr. Gemma Bowsher, a biosecurity expert, who explored the socio-political aspects of tropical disease transmission, and how the bat has been through a myriad of scenarios linking them to major pandemics. These two distinct fields helped us examine the complex topic of from several angles, we wanted to draw out what is our relationship with the bat, especially in the wake of the 2020 pandemic.  

Seeing the live audience reactions to Bat Night Market was incredible. It was not only gratifying to watch people become more curious about the bat species, but also to witness unscripted and spontaneous engagement with our installation, which was invaluable for our learning process moving forward into our second show in Taipei, Taiwan. 

Bat Night Market was designed as a traveling show, with its key elements—food and science—adaptable to the local context of each location. Our food designer, Rain Wu, directed the food concept for the first show in London, and for the show in Taipei, Rain worked closely with lead chef Jessica (last name?), they were able to bring in unique local ingredients that would give a layer of localisation to the food design at TPAC.  

A big challenge was how to seamlessly blend in an educational narrative from multiple sources surrounding the bat into our performance. This is where the skill of a theatre director became essential. Ding Yun was able to direct subtle adjustments to the actors, enabling them to deliver more educational dialogue and give the audience deeper insights into the historical and biological world surrounding the bat.  

Through this process, we achieved a true cross-disciplinary collaboration for Bat Night Market. The market theme was crucial, as markets traditionally bring together an eclectic mix of trades and specialists to create an experience. We hope that Bat Night Market echoes this tradition, allowing new trades in design and performance to be radically explored.  

Bat Night Market was an immense task for such a small team. LIFT played a crucial role in supporting the work. This project felt more like a collaborative creative studio collectively responding to a critical theme – a big thank you to Amaya, Kris, Karan, Jo and Tenikah for always being on team bat.