A surreal new audio play that takes place in darkness
Lyn Gardner’s Top 20 Picks for the Fringe 2025

“Simultaneously serene and disconcerting, and among the best theatre shows you’ll see on the [Edinburgh] Fringe” —The Scotsman ★★★★
“Very, very good… Just what you’ve come to Fringe for.” —Audience review, Edinburgh Fringe
“Intriguing and intimate…an experiment worth experiencing” —The Stage
“Might just linger in your mind long after the lights (or lack thereof) go down”
—Theatre Weekly ★★★★

Past shows (2025):
10-12 November at Voila! Theatre Festival (Barons Court Theatre, London)
19 October at Bloomsbury Festival (City Lit – John Lyon’s Theatre, London)
5-6 September at Side/Step Festival (COLAB Tower, London)
31 July – 17 Aug at Assembly Rooms (Edinburgh Fringe)
20/23 July at Omnibus Theatre, London (Ed Fringe Previews)
28 June at FUSE International Festival (ACT Studio, Kingston)
25-26 February at Old Red Lion, London (FreshFest 2025)

To sign up to Inge-Vera Lipsius’s mailing list and stay up to date on future shows and performances, please email: ivlipsius@gmail.com

Facility 111 is a surreal new audio play, written and performed live by Inge-Vera Lipsius. It takes place in complete darkness and asks audiences to visualise a series of 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?

Inge-Vera Lipsius is an American-Dutch director, theatre-maker, writer, and performer. In 2025, her play Quad Loop—the first play on the doping scandal surrounding Kamila Valieva at the 2022 Winter Olympics—was one of six pieces selected, from over 300 submissions, for the Bomb Factory Theatre New Writing Showcase at the Bush Theatre. In 2024, Quad Loop had its UK premiere at Pushkin House in Bloomsbury, London, ahead of the Paris 2024 Summer Games. Lipsius made her directorial debut at The Merchant House, Amsterdam, with Paranoia (2022/23), her adaptation (the first stage adaptation) of the post-war novella by the classic Dutch author Willem Frederik Hermans. She is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and Ecole Philippe Gaulier in France. Facility 111 was developed as part of Soho Theatre Labs, London.

Staging, text, performance: Inge-Vera Lipsius
Sound and video design: Sonny Lawson (video/sound), Ábel Esbenshade (sound)
With special thanks to: Mina Zahine, Cullen McFater, and those who helped but preferred to remain anonymous
PR: Jonathan Walfisz & Christopher Spring
Poster: Arsen Mollakaev
Editing, design, and tech support: Eunchan Choi, Léopoldine Apra, Matthew Oxley, Wil Pritchard, Conor Costelloe
Pictures: René Lazový, Cam Harle

Please note: The text contains descriptions of crisis situations.