Stuck in a room with no exit: Beyond These Walls at Capital Fringe

What do people do when they are forced to wait? What if they are forced to wait in a room with no door? What happens when, in these strange circumstances, people begin to disappear?

You know those conversations you have with people you know you’re never going to see again? The ones where you say things, admit things you might never actually offer in day-to-day life?

Beyond These Walls seeks to capture the spirit of those conversations in heightened circumstances, where what you allow yourself to share becomes key to obtaining freedom.

Beyond These Walls was first devised in 2018 as an exploration of liminal spaces and the ways strangers interact within them. Under the direction of Matt Bassett (Artistic Director of The Hub Theatre), the devising artists created a show that threw ten very different characters into one extraordinary situation and watched what unfolded. In preparation for the Capital Fringe Festival, a smaller team of writers (Frances Bagette, Satchi Hover, and Kristin Zeldes) extensively reworked Beyond These Walls to create this current version of the show, but the core remains.  

The premise: a group of strangers from widely varying backgrounds wake up in a room with no apparent exit. None of them know how they got there; none can guess when (or if) they’ll be allowed to return to their lives.

This is a story of what people do when they are stuck. Neither imprisoned by an authority nor stalled by an unfortunate turn of events, these characters are propelled to a place outside of normal space and time. Every interaction becomes an opportunity to determine why they are there and, crucially, how to get out.

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We all carry with us information that is difficult to share. Why we hold onto or why we share these stories is ultimately a function of the same thing—our desire to connect with others. Whether we do this by maintaining a façade or by exposing our genuine selves is our choice. Beyond These Walls considers what compels us to make one choice or the other and what opportunities arise when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.