ZERO
a stage adaptation of the award-winning novel NULL
by Gine Cornelia Pedersen
translated by Rosie Hedger
adapted by Everleigh Brenner
ZERO is a stage adaptation of the Norwegian cult novel Null by Gine Cornelia Pedersen and is centered on a young woman’s descent into psychosis, institutionalization, emotional fragmentation, and obsessive pursuit of meaning.
Told through a fractured theatrical language that blends realism, hallucination, and direct audience confrontation, ZERO follows our protagonist, Hero, as she moves through psychiatric wards, romantic delusion, medication, mania, and longing in search of identity.
The play explores the terrifying and exhilarating instability of the mind — asking what happens when emotion becomes too large for reality to contain.
World-premiere workshop production
Greenwich Theatre April 2027
Eight performances / Seven performers
Community programme and accessible performance
ZERO is a coming-to-self story about a young person who receives a diagnosis of “impaired mental faculties”, leading them down a rabbit hole where they must either paint their own dreamscape or be drowned by the egos guiding them astray.
Think “Inside Out” meets “One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest”.
Published by Cappelen Damm.
Published in English by Nordisk Books.
The significance of this stage adaptation lies in the use of multi-casting and fluid role transformation as a structural embodiment of Hero’s psychological experience. Rather than presenting the people Hero encounters as fixed, separate individuals, the stage adaptation allows actors to transform repeatedly across manifestations of Hero’s internal selves. Characters such as Inner Self, The Sage, The Ego, The Child, Angry Self, and The Saboteur are not simply symbolic devices, but evolving emotional forces that reappear through different people and situations throughout Hero’s journey. This creates a theatrical world in which identity becomes unstable, recursive, and psychologically associative. The effect is that the audience experiences the world as Hero experiences it: not as a stable objective reality, but as a shifting emotional landscape where patterns repeat, archetypes recur, and relationships blur into one another. This approach transforms the adaptation into something fundamentally theatrical rather than literary. The multi-casting is not simply practical staging — it is the central dramatic language of the production. As Hero’s psychological state fractures and reforms, the cast itself becomes a living extension of her consciousness. The adaptation therefore stages psychosis, memory, projection, and self-construction not through exposition, but through embodiment. In ZERO, every character becomes part of Hero’s ongoing attempt to understand herself.
ZERO, is an award-winning and critically acclaimed fully immersive and expansive read - writing that is ripe for a stage performance. This stage adaption has been written not only with immense respect for the source material and its author, but with an exciting conceptual lens that adds visual complexity whilst being audience inclusive. The experience provided by this piece is what modern audiences crave - fast, dynamic and shockingly relatable. The content, in this form, provides a timeless visual expression of indelible themes, leading to a play that will be as well regarded and award worthy as its source material.
Development Partners
Community Engagement
The Movement and Psychology lab will be led by Charlie Blowers, Founder and Director of Moving Pieces and Everleigh Brenner. Charlie is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist and clinical supervisor with nearly 30 years of experience, specialising in embodied and creative approaches to mental health and trauma. Yassmin V Foster will join as Research Facilitator, bringing more than 20 years’ experience as a movement director, artist and academic. The first day will bring the cast and facilitators together for a full reading of the play and an exploration of its psychological and physical themes. Across the following three days, four community research participants will join the cast for a series of four-hour movement sessions. Identified through South East London Mind and Outside Edge Theatre Company, these participants will bring lived perspectives connected to mental health, recovery, isolation and belonging. They will take part as valued creative contributors—not as case studies—and will receive an honorarium in recognition of their time, insight and contribution to the production. Staff from South East London Mind and Outside Edge will support participant selection through an individual suitability and access conversation. This will help confirm that each person understands the process, feels ready to participate and has any access or support requirements identified in advance. The lab will use informed consent, clear boundaries, choice-based exercises, check-ins, regular breaks and opportunities to pause or withdraw. Nobody will be expected to disclose a diagnosis or personal experience. Together, the cast and community participants will investigate how the play’s experiences of distress, identity, isolation and connection can be communicated through movement. Yassmin will help frame the creative enquiry, document what emerges and identify approaches that can be developed further. The participants’ responses and ideas will directly inform ZERO’s physical language and the design of its future community workshops.
Learning from the lab will be transformed into a programme of free workshops for Greenwich residents and adults with lived experience of mental health difficulties. Developed with Moving Pieces, South East London Mind and Outside Edge Theatre Company, these sessions will invite local people into ZERO’s continuing creative journey through accessible movement, storytelling and collaborative exercises. Participants will have the opportunity to experiment, create, connect with others and influence how the workshop model develops. No previous performance experience or personal disclosure will be required. Each session will include clear content information, adaptable activities, opportunities to pause or opt out, and appropriate signposting to further support. The resulting workshop will be designed as a flexible, tour-ready model that can travel alongside future productions of ZERO. Working with community and mental-health partners in each location, it can be adapted to reflect local interests, needs and access requirements. This will allow the project to build lasting relationships, remove barriers to creative participation and enable communities beyond Greenwich to contribute safely and meaningfully to ZERO’s future life.
Creativity, Connection and Community
ZERO is not only being made for its community, but with it. Our two-part engagement programme begins with a Movement and Psychology Lab, bringing professional artists and people with relevant lived experience into the creative process. What we learn will shape free community workshops, helping us make ambitious theatre that is inclusive, responsible and shaped by genuine exchange.
Access, Agency and Artistry
The original novel’s generous typography and spare, fragmented writing create an unusually open and immediate reading experience, including for many neurodivergent readers. That accessibility has influenced the adaptation from the beginning. Although ZERO explores difficult experiences, it celebrates mental and physical difference by inviting us into Hero’s vivid, expansive imagination. We want everyone to feel welcome in that world.
Sharing Hero's World
April 28th will be our designated Access Night. Our BSL-integrated relaxed performance will be shaped by Access Consultant and BSL interpreter Becky Barry. A Deaf BSL interpreter will embody Hero, while Becky performs the other characters and internal voices, weaving BSL into the theatrical language of the production rather than placing access at its edges. The performance will offer an adapted sensory environment, advance content information and an access guide, pre-show character introductions, freedom to move or leave and return, and a quiet decompression space. Half of all tickets will be available free to people who might otherwise be unable to attend. With support from South East London Mind and Outside Edge Theatre Company, we will develop welcoming outreach, appropriate signposting and a comfortable audience experience. After the performance, an accessible post-show discussion will bring audiences together with ZERO’s writer and Artistic Director Everleigh Brenner; co-director and disabled artist Hana Pascal Keegan; Access Consultant and BSL interpreter Becky Barry; psychotherapist and clinical supervisor Charlie Blowers; and representatives from Outside Edge Theatre Company and South East London Mind. Together, they will create space for audience questions and an open conversation about access, mental health, representation and the creative ideas explored in the production.
Creative Team
Everleigh Brenner works in London and Los Angeles as a writer, actor and is Artistic Director of Hoo Hah House Productions. She received her BA in Acting at Drama Centre London (’20) and MA in Screenwriting from the London Film Academy (’21). Her debut play BRAVE FACE was noted as the “Bravest and most Powerful (Broadway Baby)” production at the Edinburgh Fringe (’21)
Jordi M. Carter is a Caribbean-British director from Streatham, South London. His work explores how people inherit, resist, and remake systems of power, belonging, and memory. Centring Black British, West Indian and diasporic lives, his work seeks to reveal the human complexity beneath social labels, political narratives and inherited structures, with a focus on the ways individuals and communities imagine themselves beyond the systems that shape them. He made his West End debut as the Associate Director of MARIE & ROSETTA (dir. Monique Touko) at @sohoplace, directed Daniel Kaluuya’s Centre 59 Company in the sold-out devised production …BEFORE I WAKE at the Roundhouse, and co-directed the ALMEIDA THEATRE YOUNG COMPANY in new writing commissions responding to Anya Reiss’ adaptation of A DOLL’S HOUSE. He currently sits on the Board of Trustees at Chichester Festival Theatre, and was formerly the 2024/25 Lambeth Baylis Trustee at The Old Vic and Co-Artistic Director & CEO of Boundless Theatre. He holds a First Class BA (Joint Honours) in Drama & Film Studies from the University of Sussex.
Hana Pascal Keegan is a disabled, Carribean, director, writer and actor drawn to plays that capture rich, character-led interpersonal dynamics and the thrills of the body. Most recently, Hana created and directed “Beyond Her Years” at The Almeida which innovatively interwove. four iconic plays: Henrik Ibsen‘s “Hedda Gabler” and “The Lady from the Sea,” Clare Barron‘s “Dance Nation,” and Ifeyinwa Frederick‘s “The Hoes.” Hana’s assistant and associate directing credits include: Museum Of Austerity (Young Vic); The Secret Garden (Open Air Regents Park); Portia Coughlan (Almeida), All My Sons (Old Vic, NT Live), All Of Us (The National); Macbeth (Chichester Festival); Jellyfish (The Bush/National) and Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me (The Kiln). In addition to working upon a range of contemporary classics and disability-led new plays, Hana has also worked in virtual and mixed reality production at The National’s Immersive Storytelling Studio. Hana trained with Graeae Theatre Company and The Young Vic in London, and at The Eugene O’Neill Center in the USA. She regularly runs access and inclusion workshops, directs for National Youth Theatre, and teaches for Theatre Academy London.
Gine Cornelia Pedersen received the Tarjei Vesaas's Debut Prize for her debut novel ZERO in 2013. She is also a renowned actor, nominated for Gullruten in 2016 for her role as “Nenne” in the TV-series Young and Promising. She has written several critically acclaimed novels.
Yassmin V Foster is an multidisciplinary artist and director of movement. She is a researcher, academic and sound (system) woman with a portfolio career. She has over 20 years of experience working in theatre, from one handers to large scale casts, for local, national and touring work. Yassmin graduated from Goldsmiths University (BA Hons Anthropology and Media) and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (MA Choreomundus). She works within a broad range of contexts to create work that interrogates the social, artistic and economic discourse through physical expression. Her work is credited as: Director – Heroin To Hero Ameena Hamid Productions, Laying The Ground [BBC Arts, One Dance UK, BBC Connected Studios for BBC Taster. Movement Director – Hot in Here Pigfoot Theatre, All Roads Attic Theatre, Sessions Paines Plough/ Soho Theatre, award winning Queens Of Sheba Nouveau Riche/ Soho Theatre, Inside Bitch Clean Break/ Royal Court Box Clever Nabokov, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything Middle Child Theatre, With A Little Bit Of Luck Paines Plough. Choreographer – Arts Cross virtual residency [Hong Kong Academy of the Performing Arts SWEAT festival].
Dan “DJ” Johnson is a stunt coordinator, fight choreographer, action arranger and intimacy coordinator working across theatre, television and film. His credits include projects for the BBC, Disney, Amazon, Channel 4, ITV, Ealing Studios, Lyric Hammersmith, Southwark Playhouse and The Marlowe Theatre. He is currently the resident Stunt and Fight Coordinator and Action Specialist at the National Film and Television School. DJ’s relevant qualifications include: * First-class BA (Hons) in Acting and Fight Performance * MA in Acting with Distinction * Qualified Master at Arms practitioner and assessor * Qualified Self-Defence and Krav Maga Instructor * Film and Television Tactical Firearms Training * Safe Management of Stunts and Production Risk Management certification * Bectu CRISP Production Safety Passport * Emergency First Aid at Work * Risk Assessment and Working at Height certification * Level 2 Safeguarding Adults and Children training * Two-year intimacy coordination training and mentorship with EK Intimacy DJ is an associate practitioner with EK Intimacy. His work focuses on performer safety, consent-based practice and creating choreographed action that supports the production’s physical storytelling.
Charlie Blowers has a background in physical theatre and arts/somatic psychotherapy. She is a UKCP registered Psychotherapist, Clinical Supervisor, Yoga Therapist and Feldenkrais Practitioner with nearly 30 years of clinical experience. She works as a freelance facilitator, trainer and consultant to a range of organisations within the performing arts and mental health. These include LISPA, Queen Mary's University, Kingston University and National Theatre of Wales. Her physical theatre training has been inspired by teachers such as Ron East (Director of The London School of Physical Theatre), Desmond Jones (School of Mime and Physical Theatre), Angela de Castro (Director of the Why Not Institute in London), Giovanni Fusetti (Helikos), Didier Danthois (Founder of The Sacred Clown as Healer) Jonathan Young (Shams Theatre Company) and Thomas Prattki (The London International School for Performing Arts).
Amy-Rose Edlyn is a London-based producer, production manager, curator, multidisciplinary artist and theatre maker with over a decade of experience delivering theatre, live events and interdisciplinary arts projects across cultural institutions, the West End, fringe and community sectors. They are Co-Founding Director of the award-nominated Bold Mellon Collective, an arts organisation platforming intersectional queer and migrant voices, where they have produced and curated more than 60 events, exhibitions and performances since 2021 in partnership with organisations including Arts Council England, Royal Museums Greenwich, the Mayor of London and local authorities across London. Their commitment to accessible creative practice was recognised with a 'Highly Commended' Autism Heroes Award from Anna Kennedy OBE. They have a particular interest in advancing representation, education and creative approaches to mental health, neurodivergence and chronic illness across the arts.
Ellie Isherwood is a sound designer, composer, actor / musician and synth-pop artist (BYFYN). Her “dynamic” and “quietly ground breaking” work spans musicals and straight plays alike, embracing an array of forms from site-specific theatre to immersive binaural audio experiences. This year, Ellie was made the Associate Artist for The New Wolsey Theatre and was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Stiles and Drewe Best New Song Prize with her song “Nice Girls Never Win.” from the upcoming new musical, “VAMP”. Recent work includes performance and composition for the stage adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s “The Dark” and composition and sound design for “Dweeb-a-mania” at Polka Theatre. Other recent credits for theatre include, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (The Orange Tree Theatre); Disco Inferno (National Youth Theatre); The Sleep Show (UK Tour); Cartoonopolis (Pleasance); The Gel (New Diorama) The Intrusion (UK Tour); Tender (The Bush Theatre); The Fir Tree (Arts Depot); Son of a Bitch (Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe); The Odyssey (The Unicorn); The Light Princess (The Albany, Deptford / ARC – Stockton Arts Centre); The Glass Ceiling Beneath the Stars (Pleasance); and Ruby Wax: I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was (U.K. Tour)
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Atlanta Sonson-Chapman is a multi-skilled Theatre Designer from Hackney. She’s worked on different projects across the UK and overseas and proudly contributed to producing Mean Girls West End. Atlanta has a BA (Hons) in Theatre Design & Production and has been working in the industry for over 4 years. Atlanta’s skills span across lighting, sound and set design. During her time at university, she has served as the student voice head chair, addressing students’ concerns and recommendations to make their time as accessible and efficient as possible. She has continued to advocate for accessibility amongst her peers and audience members witnessing her design work. In Atlanta’s early teens, she has worked with youth companies, facilitating workshops for young people aged 7-16; she casually continues this by mentoring aspiring technicians during her creative journey. Producing credits: Mean Girls West End (Savoy Theatre); HATETH (Film); Beckett shorts (Ravensfield Theatre). Design credits: Splintered (Riverside Studios); To Be You (Greenwich Theatre & The Glitch); How to Date (Canda Water Theatre); Romeo Must Die (Theatre Peckham); Black Beth (Arcola & Greenwich Theatre); Altar (Theatre Deli); Alter Ego 2026 (Hackney Empire); Wiggy (Theatre Peckham); 99 Sleepless Nights and Painting Basquiat (The Cockpit & Greenwich Theatre); Last Goal Wins (Theatre Peckham & Union Theatre); A Hole is a Hole, Christmas on Mars (London Performance Studios); Winter Writers Showcase and Home Sweet Home(Honey Theatre); Black Joy Cabaret (Theatre Deli); When the Rain Stops Falling, Unforgotten Wrongs(Ravensfield Theatre). Technical credits: RADA MA Showcase (Marylebone Theatre); Capping (The Courtyard Theatre); Julius Caesar (Omnibus Theatre & Tour); Burn the Ocean For You (Talawa); Do You Want Something To Cry For (Theatre Peckham); Ifunanya, Last Goal Wins (Theatre Peckham); Desperate Times (The Pleasance Theatre); Going for Gold (Park Theatre & Daphne Joseph Hackett Theatre, Barbados); Nine Moons (Old Red Lion Theatre Pub & Lion & Unicorn); Year 2 Solo Performance, Year 1 Writing Performance (Royal Central School Speech and Drama); Queer Collective, 60+ Collective, Into the Snow Globe, Find Your Rhythm (Arcola Theatre).
Maya Heritage is a London-based freelance multidisciplinary designer and maker working across theatre, dance, film, installation and live events. A first-class graduate of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, she specialises in designing and building for performance. Her collaborative practice explores the relationship between performer and design. Current and recent credits include SUGA (Brixton House Studio), Hay Fever (Associate Designer to Frankie Bradshaw, West End), The Shitheads (Assistant Designer, Royal Court Theatre), Is This Thing On? (Set Designer and Builder, Hope Theatre, Northern Tour and Underbelly Cowgate), Go! The Musical (Upstairs at the Gatehouse), Oceans Apart (Theatre Ship), and I Was in the House and I Was Waiting for the Rain to Come (Barons Court Theatre). Maya also works across costume, modelmaking, technical drawing, scenic work and set and prop construction, with installation and event projects for Kew Gardens, Sketch and Chelsea in Bloom.
Lamesha Ruddock is a cultural producer, performance artist, and historian specialising in 20th-century Black British feminist history and the development of Jamaican Patois across the diaspora. She creates theatre and events that foster active engagement with Black diasporic history, equipping people with the skills to respond creatively. With a diverse background in stage management, technical theatre, producing, and writing. She is a dedicated professional in the arts and creative industries. Experienced in grant assessment, creative direction, and production management. Committed to fostering opportunities for young talents and contributing to the cultural landscape, her skills include funding acquisition, team leadership and recruitment, project management and budgeting, data analysis and reporting, prop design, as well as marketing planning.
Becky is a multi-disciplinary theatre maker and BSL/English interpreter (Becky Allen RSLI), and is honoured to be working with HighTide. Theatre credits include: Perfect Show for Rachel and Nightshift (ZooCo), The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience (Kakilang), Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood and the Major Oak, The Emperor’s New Clothes, Treasure Island and The Jungle Book (Derby Theatre), The Frogs (Spy Monkey), The Jew of Malta, Snow in Midsummer, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Dido Queen of Carthage (RSC), Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Christmas at the Snow Globe, Macbeth, The Duchess of Malfi (Shakespeare’s Globe), Twelfth Night (Southwark Playhouse), The Government Inspector, Tommy (Ramps on the Moon), The Iron Man (Graeae), Mother Courage (Red Ladder), The Woman Who Turned Into A Chicken (Barbican Centre), Getting There (The Egg), A Streetcar Named Desire, Mixtape, The Tempest, Astronauts (The Royal Exchange), The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming (Tall Stories), Jack and the Beanstalk, Beauty and the Beast (CAST Doncaster), Lysistrata, The Good Soul of Szechuan, The Tempest (Watford Palace), The Odyssey (London Bubble), The Ugly Duckling (Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch). Becky Barry is a passionate advocate for access provision, representation and liberation – onstage and off.
Emilia Nurmukhamet is a Tatar artist and founding co-artistic director of the award-nominated Bold Mellon Collective. Working across performance, sound and curation, Emilia produces projects and events that celebrate creative risk-taking, collaboration and community. Emilia is the lead producer of BOLD MUD (previously presented at The Social, VFDalston, AltBush and Stanley Arts) – an experimental electronic music and performance series centering emerging LGBTQIA+ migrant and diasporic artists. Bold Mud is an anti-disciplinary platform that flaunts the grit in glamour – shaped by play, DIY practices and mess. It exists to hold space for artists whose work sits outside conventional genre categories or mainstream industry expectations. PRS Foundation support will enable the development and delivery of BOLD MUD V, taking place on 26 September at Poplar Union (London) in collaboration with Mud Summons Records. This funding will help expand the fifth edition of the series, elevating its scale and impact while strengthening accessibility and artist support.
Bronte MacInnes is a Sydney-born, London-based Stage Manager with a decade of experience working on musical theatre, new works, large-scale plays, opera, tours and events. Her recent credits include CARE (Young Vic), Elf the Musical (Aldwych Theatre) Burlesque, the Musical (The Savoy), Richard II (Bridge Theatre), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Royal Haymarket), L’aube Rouge (Wexford Festival Opera) and Dirty Dancing (Dominion Theatre)
Freya Winterson is a London-based marketing coordinator, graphic designer and visual artist working across music and culture. She works in social media and marketing at Island Records, bringing experience in campaign development, content creation, events and visual identity. A University of Bristol Anthropology graduate, Freya also maintains a painting and drawing practice exploring landscape, embodiment and perception. For ZERO, she leads marketing, social content and audience development.
Letters of Support
From South East London Mind
"We belive ZERO offers a valuable opportunity for people to connect with others and engage creatively with themes of mental health and wellbeing. We are pleased to support the project and look forward to sharing these opportunities with out community."
Download Full Support Letter Here.
Special Thanks To... Maria Cristina Petitti Molly Spain Per Carminger Izzy Harding Perrot Jenny Wall Angelika Marie May Caroline Letelier Jack Flaminger Matteo Piombino Maciej Jaszkiewicz Susie Coutts Caroline Letelier