The Yellow Wallpaper, Q&A with cast and crew

An adaptation of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is coming to The Bull this Fringe Season, courtesy of Indigo Arts Collective. A bold and physically charged new adaptation of the classic haunting story, this play reimagines what is one of the most enduring works of feminist literature. It follows the story of a woman confined to a single room who becomes increasingly obsessed with the patterns on the wallpaper around her which, she believes, are moving. Repeatedly dismissed by her peers, her grip on reality begins to unravel, and she decides to take drastic actions… Ahead of the show’s run this September, I spoke to the creative team behind The Yellow Wallpaper about their motivations for pursuing this adaptation, the challenges of bringing such an iconic piece of literature to the stage and the themes of confinement, mental health, gender, voice and power that lie at the heart of the story.

The Yellow Wallpaper is one of the most recognisable works of feminist gothic literature. What first drew you to adapting Gilman’s story for the stage?

I have an academic and creative interest in the institutionalisation of women and women’s mental health, and I explore these subjects frequently in my work. Indigo Arts Collective also focuses on women’s stories and bringing the past into the present, so when I was thinking of our next story to bring to the stage, The Yellow Wallpaper immediately came to mind. I find it thrilling and terrifying to play with well-known stories, especially when I’m making bold adaptation choices, as I’ve done with this production. I’m a purist in a lot of ways, but also really love getting to create something new by swimming around in source material, exploring it through my own lens, and spitting it back out into the world again. What I’ve created with this adaptation feels in conversation with the original text in many ways, and it's my telling of the story’s key message. 

In what ways do you feel this story still has something urgent to say to today’s audiences?

Fundamentally, it asks many of the same questions we’re grappling with today: Who has authority over their own body? Whose knowledge is valued? How are women expected to behave? What happens when women refuse the roles imposed on them? Swap “women” for any number of marginalised identities, and the distressingly relevant parallel extends to even more people in contemporary society. These are active struggles, and the rate of new knowledge we’ve acquired over the last century doesn’t seem to correlate to our rate of progress in these areas. 

Can you tell us about the creative process behind the production? How did you begin to approach transforming Gilman’s original text into a piece of live theatre?

When adapting text for stage, I always try to start with the elements that theatre as a medium can uniquely elevate and accentuate.  That might mean trimming elements that rely too heavily on exposition and considering how we might show rather than tell what’s going on; it also often means building a sensory world for the piece with light, sound, and movement. Inevitably, some of my own writing creeps in as well, because I’ve discovered a memory or a moment of connection for the character in my reading of the work that I want to include. As for the new choices made in our adaptation, they came from what, for me, has always felt like a challenging ending to the original story. Our ending attempts to remove some of the more allegorical elements of the original text and bring the real stakes of the situation to life. 

You describe this piece as ‘physically charged’ - what does this level of physicality bring to this story that a more traditional adaptation might not?

We find our protagonist in a repressed place, in a repressive world at the top of the piece, but her evolving relationship with the woman in the wallpaper moves her further from the world she inhabits, so that in her demise there is also a liberation. We try to demonstrate this with the character’s physicality and bring this element of the story into focus.

The wallpaper itself is such an iconic and unsettling image and becomes almost a character in its own right. What has it come to represent for you and how have you approached translating something that exists largely within the protagonist’s imagination into a theatrical experience?

In our production, the wallpaper transforms for the audience as it shifts in our protagonist's mind. The initial layer audiences see is a faded floral pattern, yellowed by time. It’s something that initially conjures up images of gentle domesticity, but in dereliction, and is representative of where we find The Woman at the start of the play. Looking closer, not everything is as it initially appears, and as the show progresses and the front layer of the paper begins to peel, more and more is revealed. The transformation itself is part of the performance, so I won’t reveal too much here, but it was definitely a dynamic journey to bring the wall to life, especially under fringe conditions. 

Are there particular conversations around women's voices, mental health or power that you hope the production will provoke?

At the centre of the story is a woman whose account of her own experience is repeatedly dismissed by men in her life, who also happen to be doctors. They assure her that all is well, when she knows deeply that something isn’t right. I imagine every woman in the audience will have their own proximity to this experience, either firsthand or anecdotally through other women in their lives. The core theme of the play is at the heart of contemporary discussions around mental health, women’s healthcare, disability, chronic illness and medical advocacy. I would love for the production to be a lens to think critically about how far we’ve really come in these areas, and to ignite a fire in people to use their voice to do more.

I think it’s important to recognise that the story isn’t really about a “woman going mad”; it’s about what happens when someone loses the right to define their own reality. 

Why was the Wanstead Fringe the right setting for The Yellow Wallpaper, and what have you enjoyed about bringing this work to a fringe audience?

I’m proud to call Wanstead home, and have staged work at the Wanstead Fringe before, so I know what intelligent and engaging audiences we have in our community. It’s a safe space to bring new work to life and an exciting space to share new ideas, all right in my backyard! 

What do you hope audiences take away from the production, or perhaps what do you hope they continue thinking about after they leave?

I want audiences to think about advocacy. How we can do it better for ourselves, but perhaps more crucially, how we can identify when it’s needed for others. The Yellow Wallpaper is a story of someone who knows something isn’t right and doesn’t have anyone around to believe her. The support she’s offered isn’t the support she needs, and this has tragic consequences in our play, just like it does every day in our modern lives. In the UK, perinatal mental illness affects 20% of women in the perinatal period, and accounts for 34% of maternal deaths. We also know that these stats are on the conservative side, as perinatal depression and similar conditions are frequently underdiagnosed. At a time 

Looking beyond the Fringe, what are your ambitions for this product and for the future of your company?

We’re debuting the show at Wanstead Fringe, so I’m eager to get it on its feet and in front of an audience for the first time so we can see how it lands. I always create audience feedback cards for productions like this and ask folks to complete them on the way out so the piece can continue to evolve through audience engagement. I’d love to refine it further and take it to other festivals and theatres in London and beyond. 

Indigo Arts Collective has been around since 2019 on a mission to create work at the intersection of art, scholarship, and activism. We’re committed to developing engaging interdisciplinary performance work for theatres and alternative spaces with a specific interest in female-identifying stories. We create relatively small-scale work because that’s what our budget allows, but our ambitions are much larger than our wallet, and we’re eager to seek more substantial funding to progress existing projects like this one, and develop new work currently in development.