Camden Fringe: Yijing Zou on Bathroom

**Yijing Zou on rewriting Bathroom from inside the London life it now describes**

Bathroom began life in Shenzhen in 2024, a two-hander about how selfish people can be in love. Then its writer and director, Yijing Zou, moved to London with her partner in 2025, and the play changed underneath her. The couple on stage now argue in a small rented flat rather than an imagined one: he’s been questioned about his identity by a stranger downstairs, she’s come home carrying the sting of being judged for her English at work, and neither of them can work out why the other is angry. Zou’s company, Limpid Theatre, is a London-based collective drawing its members from Central Saint Martins, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, the London Film School and Wimbledon College of Arts, and Bathroom is their attempt to find out what happens when ordinary objects (a fish tank, a cat litter tray, a body scrub) are asked to carry the weight of a relationship falling apart.

Red Bus: Bathroom started as a 2024 piece about how selfish people can be in a relationship, then changed shape after you and your partner moved to London in 2025. What did rewriting it, from inside the experience it’s now about, teach you that you couldn’t have known writing it the first time?

Yijing Zou: First off, back in China, I barely paid attention to my surroundings. Having lived there for over 20 years, my senses were pretty much dulled by routine, so I rarely thought about my place in society, and my partner was the same. But when we moved to London, I realised we reacted to this change completely differently. My approach was to adapt and try to fit in, while my partner went to the other extreme, which made it really painful for him.

Secondly, adapting to life here feels a lot like going through re-socialisation. With a new language and lifestyle, we have to rebuild our social network from scratch. Suddenly, “competition”, a word that had been hidden under love for a long time, popped up. Jealousy, comparison… how on earth do we balance our relationship with ourselves with our relationship with each other?

In short, this 2026 version is really about how a couple navigates changes from the outside world together, and how those external changes end up changing them.

Red Bus: The man in the play is questioned about his identity downstairs, and the woman is judged at work for her English. How much of that came directly from your own experience of London, and how much did you build outward from it?

Yijing Zou: I’d say a huge part of the story comes from first-hand experience, but I made a few adjustments in how it’s presented in the script, such as tweaking the setting or shifting the timeline. For instance, the scene where the male lead is questioned about his identity downstairs was inspired by a real encounter when my partner and I were queuing at a bar in Soho and got approached by a stranger. Similarly, the woman being judged for her English comes from an unpleasant experience I had during my very first time directing a play here in London.

Red Bus: You’ve spoken about wanting the audience to take a voyeuristic position, watching without judgement. What made you want to withhold judgement from an audience, rather than guide them toward one?

Yijing Zou: One of the key concepts in this play is the mismatch between expressing love and receiving it. Because of this disconnect, morally, neither person is right or wrong. I’ve also never liked handing the audience a “correct” perspective. In my view, unless it’s something concrete like 1+1=2, nothing in life is absolutely right or wrong. For me, art is more about sensation and the process of self-reflection; presenting that process itself is enough. At the end of the day, I certainly don’t feel qualified to preach to anyone from any platform.

Red Bus: The body paint stands in for both love and blood. Was that always the image, or did it arrive later in the process, once the show had moved from 2024 into this version?

Yijing Zou: That image was actually there right from the beginning in the original Chinese version. The idea came from a personal routine of mine: I regularly use body scrubs, and sometimes my partner helps me put them on. The scrub contains exfoliating granules, so while having him apply it felt very intimate, those particles can actually sting your skin. I started thinking about how love is much the same: it brings both pleasure and pain. Red carries that exact same duality; it’s the colour of a heart, but also the colour of a wound.

Red Bus: You’ve used a cocktail party effect in the sound design, letting the audience’s attention drift the way it might in real life. What was it like handing that much control over to an audience’s own ear?

Yijing Zou: I believe that when the house lights dim, regardless of who you are, everyone can find their own place in the darkness to seek resonance with the actors on stage. That is precisely why I love theatre creation. Everyone carries a different emotional background and views things through a different lens. Rather than dictating what the audience must focus on, I prefer handing control back to them, enabling them to truly resonate with live people, performance, and space within that brief window of time.

Red Bus: The soundtrack leans on Cantonese songs tied to your own background. What do you want a London audience to take from music that may carry no personal memory for them at all?

Yijing Zou: To me, the magic of music lies in the fact that emotion needs no translation.

Even if London audiences don’t understand Cantonese lyrics or hold nostalgic memories of that culture, the emotions within the melodies, the loneliness, tenderness, or subtle impulses, cross language barriers. First and foremost, these songs serve as an “audio backdrop.” Even without following every word, audiences can emotionally step closer to the characters’ inner world.

On the other hand, these Cantonese songs serve as “anchors” of my personal memory, representing where I come from, whereas London is where my partner and I currently live. Bringing them into the play is itself a true reflection of carrying past memories into a new life.

London audiences may have no past memories tied to this music, but the magic of theatre is its ability to build fresh connections in the “here and now.” Hearing these melodies in the theatre binds the sound directly to the plot, lighting, and atmosphere of Bathroom.

Ultimately, I hope they experience not only emotional resonance, but also the subtle tension of being abroad while overlapping with memories of home. Even if you have never visited my hometown, you can share a part of my soul through sound in this moment, and create your own new memories for these songs within this space.

Red Bus: Bathroom is heading to Edinburgh after Camden. Do you think the show will change at all moving between the two, or is it staying exactly as it is?

Yijing Zou: I intend to keep the show as consistent as possible between the two locations.

Bathroom plays Camden Etcetera on 3 August at 1pm and 4 August at 7pm (265 Camden High Street, NW1 7BU), before transferring to C Venues in Edinburgh from 10 to 16 August at 12.30pm. Booking for Camden is via the Camden Fringe listing; Edinburgh tickets are on the Edinburgh Fringe website.

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