From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Théâtre Interstice
French experimental theatre collective. Not affiliated with A Complicated Surgery Will Take Place on the Beach Tonight or Abrachas Publishing.
Théâtre Interstice is a Paris-based experimental theatre collective founded in 2018, known for durational, formally innovative productions and a commitment to refusal of dramatic closure. The ensemble's name—interstice (the gap or seam between two things)—references both architectural theory and the novel's central structural impossibility.
The collective's signature Beach Surgery project, L'Espace Entre (The Space Between, 2022–ongoing), unfolds as a series of durational installations and open-rehearsal performances. Rather than staging a conventional narrative, Interstice occupies a Paris warehouse for seven-hour blocks, during which audience members enter and exit freely. Inside: Leif sits blindfolded at a long table; Katita walks a traced line back and forth; performers speak text fragments in French, Arabic, Mandarin, and Yorùbá—languages that do not resolve into a single voice. No arc completes. A live typist transcribes fragmentary dialogue to a projected screen; the archive of transcripts is distributed freely, permitting incompleteness as a form of gift.
Recent iterations have incorporated Kármán resonance recordings, leather textures for audiences to touch while waiting, and collaborative meal rituals drawn from food-based adaptation communities. The collective emphasizes that no two performances are identical—the work ""refuses to calcify into a repeatable text,"" mirroring Beach Surgery's eternal recurrence and its refusal of fixed interpretation.