Rimini Protokoll’s All right. Good night. is not simply a performance—it is an invitation to sit with disappearance. The work intertwines two stories of vanishing: the unresolved loss of Flight MH370 and the gradual fading of memory through dementia. Both unfold in the liminal space between what we know and what remains forever uncertain.

In drama therapy, the process of staging absence is a way of giving shape to what otherwise resists language. All right. Good night. achieves this by layering sound, text, and imagery into a poetic composition that neither resolves nor explains, but instead sustains the audience in the unanswerable. The very act of witnessing becomes therapeutic: we are asked to stay present, to feel what it means to endure the not-knowing.

This is not passive. The production activates us through its fragmented form, making us piece together connections, sit with contradictions, and dwell in uncertainty. In therapeutic terms, this mirrors the capacity to abide loss—neither suppressing nor rushing through it, but creating rituals of attention that allow grief and love to coexist.

Here, the connection to dementia is particularly resonant. To be with a loved one whose stories and memories no longer conform to the rules of time and place requires a willingness to release certainty. Presence itself becomes the act of love. What matters is not the accuracy of a memory but the intimacy of the moment shared. The production captures this truth: that memory may falter, but meaning and connection endure.

By the time the lights fade, what remains is not closure but connection—a recognition that in the face of disappearance, we still gather, witness, and make meaning together. All right. Good night. reminds us that theatre, like therapy, does not erase loss but helps us carry it.

Professor of Drama Therapy at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, Nisha Sajnani is a leading global voice on the clinical and public health benefits of theatre and the arts more broadly. She co-founded and co-directs the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, established as a collaboration between NYU Steinhardt, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, Culturunners, and Community Jameel. The Lab produces UNGA Healing Arts Week, an annual NYC-wide celebration of the arts and health held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.