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Inside the mind theatre of Inge-Vera Lipsius: why her Edinburgh show happens in the dark

Richard Beck Richard Beck
14 Jul 2025

Inge-Vera Lipsius is an American-Dutch director and writer (b. 1996), and a graduate of the University of Cambridge (literature and theatre) and Ecole Philippe Gaulier in France. Here, she writes about the rationale behind her style of theatre and her Edinburgh Fringe debut Facility 111: A Government Experiment, her most experimental piece to date.

Facility 111: A Government Experiment is a surreal new play/audio experience that I have written, staged, and am performing live. It takes place in darkness and asks audiences to visualise poetic images in two different, but interconnected cities—one made of glass, another of sand. Through the guise of a sci-fi government experiment, the play asks: Are we ultimately less different from one another than we might think?

My main aim was to create a piece where, basically, the show is constructed in the minds of the audience, who provide its set, characters, and worlds. As a result, everyone will construct a different show, based on the same piece of writing. Even if you were to “see” it twice, you might visualise something different each time, which very much taps into the imagination element that is so important for theatre. I am extremely keen on making the audience an essential part of any performance I stage; for me, since theatre is live, there should always be a reason for the audience to be there in person, as opposed to when watching a movie, for example.

So far, my works have explored social and political themes in unexpected ways, using minimal means to evoke a strong emotional effect and making the audience a key part of the action. In my play Quad Loop—a montage/verbatim text, with an all-female cast—I explored the role played by the spectator during high-stakes sports events. It was the first play about the Kamila Valieva doping scandal at the 2022 Winter Olympics, and the audience was seated in traverse around the stage, watching a chorus who watched and commented on the Olympics. It was selected for the Bomb Factory Theatre New Writing Showcase at the Bush Theatre and was performed at Pushkin House, London. 

My other production, Paranoia, was my adaptation (the first stage adaptation) of the post-war novella by the classic Dutch author Willem Frederik Hermans. Staged in a canal house in Amsterdam, at the art space/gallery The Merchant House, it placed audiences in the bedroom of a guilt-ridden young man in post-World War Two Amsterdam. Over the course of the show, it brought audiences into the protagonist’s paranoid state of mind.

With Facility 111, I wanted the focus to be on the audience and their experience of the piece—what they think it is about and what they decide to visualise or imagine based on the images being described. Part of the challenge of writing and constructing the play was to find a style of writing that was descriptive, but not prescriptive. The piece is inspired by real events, but these events are not explicitly disclosed either in the blurb or the piece itself; by the end, you might surmise what it is based on, or you might not, and the piece might retain its more surreal/abstract quality.

In a time when we are surrounded by so much visual imagery, it has been fascinating to explore a non-visual form of theatre/storytelling, which might lead people to discover new things about themselves and each other through the things they choose to imagine. Comments from audiences during previews have, for example, mentioned the idea of hypnotherapy, which I hadn’t thought of in advance…and people seem very keen on comparing their experiences post-show!

I played around with disclosing what Facility 111 was based on, but ultimately decided not to. I can say (but perhaps some of this is already clear from the blurb above) that the piece touches on themes of identity, migration, women’s rights, and empathy. By asking you to visualise yourself in places or situations that might be different from what you know, it pushes the boundaries of what can be considered “familiar” or “unfamiliar.” In fact, imagination—and empathy—can take us a long way in terms of bridging the gap between peoples, and countries…

London Previews:

Sun 20 July and Wed 23 July, 19:30 pm: Omnibus Theatre, Clapham (Edinburgh Previews)https://www.omnibus-clapham.or...

For more information about the show, and future performances, please see:www.merchanthouse.nl/facility...


Richard Beck

Richard Beck

A graduate in theology and education, Richard acted and contributed to dance, drama and music productions throughout his teaching career. He joined Broadway Baby in 2014 and is now our Editor-in-Chief. He usually disappears to warmer climes for the winter to pursue his passion for travel.

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