The Wall

A woman spends a few days at a hunting lodge belonging to friends in the Alps. When the couple fail to return home one night, she sets out to look for them, accompanied by their dog Luchs. In the mountains she comes up against an invisible, impenetrable wall that cuts her off completely from the rest of the world. Gradually it dawns on her that she may be the only survivor of an inexplicable disaster. Together with Luchs, a cat and a cow she takes up the struggle to survive, and becomes ever more a part of the inhospitable natural world around her.

The Wall is the story of a rebirth forced upon her and a compelling plea for care and compassion towards all life.

'Actress Nietvelt gives a performance of real calibre' – NRC

Date: August 21, 2025 - April 26, 2026
Duration: 100 min, no interval
Genre: Theatre
Language: Dutch

Caring for the animals and for nature keeps her alive. So does setting down a record of her struggle to survive, through which she tries to keep her language and her powers of thought intact. By making the book itself that record, and so also a look back over the past two and a half years, an ingenious play with time emerges. The Wall is the story of a rebirth forced upon her and a compelling plea for care and compassion for all life.

Marlen Haushofer wrote The Wall in 1963, at the height of the Cold War, a period of political paranoia and nuclear threat. The post-apocalyptic novel draws its power from its penetrating description of humans and animals living together in symbiosis. Without the slightest trace of sentimentality, Haushofer succeeds in making clear that it is empathy and ethics that keep the narrator alive. Her dealings with the animals and her need to care for them well give her existence meaning.

Hunting, killing, skinning and slaughtering are a necessary evil for the narrator. She does it reluctantly, and only when she no longer has enough plant-based food. But as well as a plea for compassion for the world around us, The Wall is also the story of the rebirth of a woman who, freed from social constraints and prescribed roles, reinvents herself.

"If time exists solely in my head and I am the last human being, then it will come to an end with my death. That thought cheers me. Perhaps it lies in my hands to murder time. The great web will tear and plunge with its sad contents into oblivion. They ought to be grateful to me for that, but after my death no one will know that I murdered time."

Reviews

de Volkskrant

'In the fascinating monologue The Wall you see what happens when all a human being has left to fall back on is nature.'

Trouw

'The atmosphere Arbo and Nietvelt create is powerful, almost intoxicating.'

Het Parool

'De wand is impressive.'

In de voorstelling de wand zit een vrouw met krullend haar en vegen op haar gezicht geknield op donkere aarde, in een lange donkere jas, en kijkt omhoog, terwijl witte nevel in blauw licht om haar heen over het toneel kruipt.

Met aarde op haar gezicht, hals en armen zit een vrouw met rossig krullend haar in een groengrijs werkhemd laag op de grond in de voorstelling de wand; ze heft een hand naast haar hoofd en houdt in de andere een koperkleurig voorwerp.

Director Eline Arbo

“What would you do if you found yourself in a situation like that of the woman in The Wall, where you would have to start again completely from scratch? That is a thrilling question, because we are not remotely prepared for anything of the kind. Our relationship with the natural world has changed too much for that. The woman in the book is a survivor, and an incredible strength comes from that. At the same time, it is precisely her gentle dealings with nature – the earth and the living creatures around her – that make the book so beautiful. Caring for other life gives her existence meaning in a hopeless world. It is a story about the relationship between humankind and nature, about empathy and caring for others. I grew up in the north of Norway myself, where dependence on nature and the bond with it are far stronger than here in the Netherlands. Sometimes I am afraid of losing my relationship with nature altogether. The Wall challenges us to stop placing human beings at the centre of the world and to see them as only one part of something larger.”

Bij de voorstelling de wand knielt Eline Arbo lachend in een grote bak zwarte aarde, in een zwarte jurk, met een lange houten schuiver in haar handen; om de bak staan rijen grijze klapstoelen.

'The remarkable technical inventions, which make the weather palpable, visible and physically felt in the auditorium, remove the fourth wall in this production. With them Eline Arbo finds a way of expressing her ecological and mystical reading of the book.'

From: the jury report of the Nederlands Theater Festival 2025

Behind the scenes at The Wall

Author Marlen Haushofer

Marlen Haushofer (1920-1970) was an Austrian writer who in recent years has come back into the spotlight thanks to her penetrating portraits of women trying to free themselves from the chains of a patriarchal society. In De mansarde and her masterpiece The Wall she shows their resilience and their ability to escape the roles imposed on them by society through the power of the imagination. Together with Ingeborg Bachmann and Elfriede Jelinek, Marlen Haushofer ranks among the very best that Austrian literature has to offer.

Credits

Marlen Haushofer

direction

Eline Arbo

adaptation

Eline Arbo, Peter van Kraaij

composition and music design

Thijs van Vuure

translation

Ria van Hengel

dramaturgy

Peter van Kraaij

scenography

Eline Arbo, Django Walon

lighting design

Dennis van Scheppingen

costume design

Eline Arbo, Wim van Vliet

assistant director

Angelo Ormskerk

private producer

Hans Sauerwein, Remke Schermer, Paula and Willem van der Schoot

this production is supported by

Ammodo

Chris Nietvelt

Reviews

Director Eline Arbo

Author Marlen Haushofer

Credits

This production is supported by