The Waiting Room
A unique, unrepeatable, performance unifying an audience of strangers in the spirit of play.
Photographed by Tashi Hall
What are we waiting for? Lunch, the dentist, judgement day, the end?
Waiting is universal. Everyone has been there at some point, either by choice or circumstance and it is often done in the company of strangers.
Enter The Waiting Room and you immediately ask: where’s the stage? The entire space is filled with rows of chairs. Sit where you will; from the outset, the audience is complicit in the show’s creation.
Sit and watch or join in as interactions occur, events take place, meaning accrues and the line between audience and performer fades. Orchestrated in real time by Born in a Taxi’s virtuosic approach to collective improvisation, honed over 30 years of performance research, the stakes keep getting higher, until finally one person's wait is over, in an unexpected twist: a grand solo is performed by an audience member.
Empowering and unpredictable, The Waiting Room is a real-time revelation that life is what happens while we are waiting for something else. A groundbreaking masterclass in theatrical experience, it is capable of seducing an audience back into loving themselves, and reminds us that even in the dystopian chaos of the world outside, happiness is still possible.
Collective human behaviour under the microscope, from the ordinary to the absurd.
Photographed by Tashi Hall
“What makes this piece radically beautiful is that it interrogates and embodies the random processes intrinsic to human behaviour.
Informed by physical theatre, social psychology and neuroscience, The Waiting Room is a living incarnation of fractal art ★★★★”
“Sheer, playful joy.... completely blurs the line between watcher and watched”
“A complete night at the theatre; surprising, eloquent, strange, funny, exhilarating, ridiculous, intimate, awkward, original”
“Don’t expect to sit passively in a darkened theatre when you see The Waiting Room because you will incrementally become part of the performance without really noticing ★★★★”
“The Waiting Room is cutting-edge experimental theatre: a profound exploration of how we choreograph ourselves from chaos.
...As with so much of Born in a Taxi’s art, this is improvised performance that appears anything but - not least because the equations from which it flows are so meticulously considered ★★★★”
“The ability of the performers to almost telepathically fragment and re-cohere always followed a mysterious boundary line between order and chaos… One room, one door, rows of chairs and ourselves as co-performers. ”
“’The Waiting Room’ is an extremely difficult experience to describe... and I can say this without hyperbole, it is the most mesmerising experience that I have had all year in the theatre.”
“Do not be afraid, because there is no pressure to join, merely quiet, persuasive engagement and reassuring glances that embolden the audience and motivate them to contribute.”
“Beguiling movement performance that incorporates the signature, non-verbal, improvisational style and captivating audience engagement that distinguishes the award-winning Born In A Taxi.”
“I can say this without hyperbole, it is the most mesmerising experience that I have had all year in the theatre.”