Nullspace Motel, The Junction, Cambridge, 6-7 November 2025

The performing artist and director Symoné brings her show Nullspace Motel (here without the accompanying piece ‘Highway to Infinity’, an interactive installation) to Cambridge Junction this week. The work was commissioned by UK Black Pride and the Junction itself, among others, and its promise of a non-linear blend of live art, dance and non-linear storytelling serves as a welcome reminder of the diversity and vitality of the performing arts. We are a world away here from conventional plays such as The Gathered Leaves and The Assembled Parties – the last two productions your correspondent saw – with their linear narratives and easily recognisable settings.

The striking set features a chaise longue that immediately catches the eye of the couple in front of me: ‘Would you dare to sit there?’ I hear one of them ask the other. In the event, they both end up doing so (the woman first, then the man), taking up the challenge of being Players 2 and 3, respectively, after another audience member acts as Player 1. The changing identities of these Players underscores the fact that every performance of the show is different: on some nights, volunteers will gamely step forward, while on others, some encouragement may be required (we are told by the disembodied voice of Ish, our digital narrator, to ‘decide amongst ourselves’ who should sit in the chair). The presence of an audience member downstage, looking at the big screen at the back of the space while equipped with a control pad, is innovative, but unfortunately there were some longueurs when Player 1 was in the ‘hot seat’ – whether due to technical glitches or, perhaps, Player 1 not knowing which button to press on his controller (though he seemed to try all of them). We will never know how the show may have been different had Players 1, 2 and 3 made different choices, but then, as one of the show’s two performers points out, life itself is like that: it is a series of binary choices. One gets the sense that those who see the show multiple times (including the crew and the director herself) will be able to get more out of it than those who only see it once: they will see more of the variations, the twists and turns it can take.

Another source of variation in the performances is the fact that the two female dancers’ movements are guided, to an extent, by the decisions and actions of the Players. At the start of the show, we see them huddled in front of a TV screen looking almost like a single entity, absorbed in a video game that one of them is playing. The one who is not playing then enters into a monologue, waxing philosophical about the connections between the gamer and the pixelated character: ‘Your finger moves, and a micro-second later, her body responds.’ Li Xu is excellent here, conveying amazement at the magic of the game and then using masterful movement and gesture to show her character falling into ‘a world with no edges’. As she lies down, arms aloft, she utters a haunting cry to her partner, played by Yuma Sylla, who has hitherto been totally absorbed by the game: ‘Are you still there?’ The two seem to fall through the fabric of reality and from this point on, they communicate largely through dance. Whilst their physical performance is outstanding and their dancing exquisite, more dialogue between the characters would be welcome; that said, our narrator reminds us that this story is one of fractured memories, so the scant verbal communication is clearly intentional. Moreover, different choices by the Players would perhaps result in more dialogue: does Player 2 need to be quite so trigger-happy when presented with a pixelated heart? Either way, we see romance blossoming between the two dancers: the voiceover talks of Sapphic love as they take to the pole-dancing podium, their emotions and movements perfectly in sync, and the on-screen text reads: ‘Current objective: discover the meaning of love’.

One of the questions Ish asks Player 1 is: ‘Does meaning in life come solely from what meaning humans create?’ Player 1 answered ‘Yes’, and I can’t help wondering whether, if he had said ‘No’, we would have been served up something more inherently meaningful, with a more overt message. As it is, any attempt to ascribe meaning to the blend of gaming and live art that we witness may end up in as much of a tangle as the cables strewn around the stage. Ish might tell me that I’m overthinking it – after all, she warns Player 1 not to overthink his answers. Yet there are times when the show could offer so much more: we are told about the guests at a motel one night, for instance (they include two suicides and a child husband), but the theme of motels is not explored in greater depth.

There is much to enjoy in the choreography, and the element of unpredictable audience participation was a refreshing reminder of the theatre’s power to innovate, but, like Ish’s voice, Nullspace Motel is glitchy in its current form, and does not explore the blurred lines between video games, memory and motels with sufficient vigour.