‘Host’ is one of those delicious words whose multiple meanings sit, humming, in tension with one other, creating a delicious mental paradox. Both intimate, generous even, and legion, slightly threatening, its abstract use in the project’s title leaves all possible meanings in suspension. As if what exactly the project is to become has yet to be inhabited.

The HOST project marks a new beginning for Brighton’s cherished Nightingale Theatre team. Since their ejection from their pub theatre premises earlier this year, the organisation will now look for alternative models through which to present the best new performance work, underpinned by the belief that ‘theatre can happen anywhere.’ In this inaugural production under the HOST banner written by local artist Tim Crouch, it is difficult to imagine a closer knit connection of subject to form.

Closed into a wooden bathing machine, the buzz of Brighton’s shopping street New Road is abruptly muffled and all that remains is the other individual sitting waiting for you at a simple table. They start to read. They speak directly to you. They plead, they question. They have strong ideas. They look you in the eye. The text is simple and immediate, though you remain (largely) silent, your presence absolutely necessary – it’s a conversation, if one sided. The exchange peaks in intensity, packed with ideas and provocations about relationships, connections, and our responsibilities to our partners, to others. And then they leave. You are left with the script, a moment’s breathing space and then a new stranger arrives to sit opposit. Now you speak and they listen.

In a five minute piece it’s perhaps inevitable that some of the ideas feel a little underdeveloped. The strand about tradition and continuity felt like it called for some greater possibility for deviation or change. But in such a short exchange it’s difficult both to set up the rules and establish the possibility of their being broken. And in this confident opener Crouch’s gift is in making the name of the game so simple and clear than you never feel discomfited by the unusual set up: you can relax, inhabit and enjoy. And the overwhelming gift of this free show is its extraordinary potency as an experience, immediately intimate and arresting, appealing to all of our inner actors. HOST raises all kinds of intriguing questions about the nature of performance, as well that as of art as exchange, and the inspection of art and life. With relay performances set to continue outwith the festival, as well as new commissions yet to be developed as the Nightingale continues its flight to a new home, it will be fascinating to see what other innovations and ideas this project is set to bring to the table.