Over the past year WhiteSpace Theatre have performed their acclaimed production of The Yellow Wallpaper in Edinburgh and London.

 Adapted for stage & Directed by Sarah Elaine Stewart
Based on the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is Edgar Allan Poe meets Sweeney Todd down a dark alley in Sleepy Hollow (with Vivienne Westwood and Tim Burton for company)!

THE PLAY

A new, one act adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gillman's chilling The Yellow Wallpaper, a Victorian psychological short story, in the style of Edgar Allen Poe. Originally, a self-narrated piece exploring the effects of enforced confinement and powerlessness of a nameless woman after the birth of her child who is driven to madness by the wallpaper in her bedroom. With only her diary for company, she starts to imagine she can see a woman trying to break free and begins to find the paper equally fascinating and repulsive. She believes that by finding the woman and projecting her own suffering onto this creeping menace, she can finally be at peace with herself.

Is the woman real or only in her mind? Does she infect those who come into contact with her? The play intertwines heightened naturalistic scenes with her overbearing husband and dutiful sister, with physical theatre and dance to represent the abstraction of the woman in the wallpaper and explore her relationship with Charlotte who is slowly and violently morphing into her. With a specially written sounds cape, the play intends to unsettle an audience in a close and intimate setting.

Drawing on the phenomenal success of Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of The Red Death by Punchdrunk at The Battersea Arts Centre, this piece provides an exciting debut Edinburgh opportunity for a talented and deeply committed group of actors, designers, directors and technical crew who have worked together on a number of productions over the last 7 years. Only one adaptation of The Yellow Wallpaper has previously been performed at the festival.

SYNOPSIS

I'm lost IN it. It tricks me. It creeps all over me.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a chilling and disturbing Gothic Horror tale, adapted from Charlotte Perkins Gillman's short story.

Charlotte is sent away by her overbearing husband to find 'perfect rest' in a remote Country House, following the birth of her first child. He soon deems it necessary to hide her and her irrational behaviour, locking her away in the disused nursery. Only Charlotte's distress seems to stem from the room's only feature. The Yellow Wallpaper. What is she seeing in its hideous, creeping pattern? Her saviour or her death? Charlotte is quickly drawn into a dangerous game with her new captor in the wallpaper, which threatens to infect her and those close to her.