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
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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