No Exit

Four women are locked in a room. Their greatest punishment is not the room, but each other. Four women are brought together in a closed, artificial space where nothing is what it seems. What begins as a search for explanations grows into a suffocating game of confrontations, manipulation and failed attempts at connection. Each of them clings to old behavioral patterns: the observer, the seducer, the savior, the investigator, but in the confrontation with the other, the masks begin to crack. The space seems to breathe along, to magnify tensions and to mercilessly confront them with themselves. Words lose their meaning, intentions distort and the truth proves increasingly difficult to grasp. While the mutual relationships harden and escalate, they are forced to face not only each other, but also themselves. In their urge to be seen, understood or desired, they lose every sense of real connection. Their greatest prison turns out not to be the room, but the way they look at themselves and the other. Trapped in their inability to make real contact, they try to unravel one question: Why are we here? But perhaps the real question is not why they are here, but whether they can ever escape who they have become for each other – and if not, remain condemned to each other forever. Are we who we think we are, or are we slowly becoming trapped in the gaze of the other? This performance is a completely original creation, with newly written text and characters by Dave Wiggers and Hanneke van de Kerkhof, in close collaboration with the actresses. The play is a contemporary interpretation, inspired by the concept of Huis clos by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, in which the other becomes not only a mirror, but also a boundary and a prison. “Hell, that is the others – but the others, that is us.” — Jean-Paul Sartre