Two black-and-white film characters are trapped inside an endlessly looping silent movie. Every day they repeat the same actions, the same rhythm and the same story: one runs, one waits, one keeps trying, one keeps failing. Beyond the screen lies another world, full of colour, music and the sound of wind across the sand. So they begin searching for a way out. They try, fail, and try again, and gradually the unbreakable rules of their world start to loosen and its borders begin to crack. Created by Dutch company Helena.and.Goos, Vrij (FREE) blends silent-film comedy, clowning, physical theatre and live music into a story about escape and freedom.

Rather than telling us what freedom is, Vrij turns to the small, everyday moments of life: routines that hem us in, relationships that replay themselves, and the moments when we try once more even though we know the outcome. Its characters are pulled back to where they started again and again, yet they never stop moving forward. Directors and performers Helena Bittencourt and Goos Meeuwsen have collaborated with Cirque du Soleil and Compagnia Finzi Pasca and have toured across Europe and the Americas. Here they let laughter and absurdity sit side by side as they explore love, fear, habit and change. Perhaps freedom is not a final destination, but the courage to set out again and again.