Interview: building an inner sanctuary through fantasy and sound

Late Night Submarine, The Libra Theatre Cafe

We may have hit our 100 target a few days ago, but we’ve still got plenty more Camden Fringe 2025 interviews to share with you before we stop. You can find all our interviews here and once you’ve read them, why not book in to see a show or two.

Late Night Submarine comes to The Libra Theatre Cafe on 23 and 24 August, tickets here, and it promises to be something rather different. You’ll be given a set of headphones to wear so you can be fully immersed in the soundscapes that help make up this show. It sounds like the perfect way to escape the hustle and bustle you’re likely to have had walking along Camden High Street to this lovely little cafe theatre venue!

We caught up with two of the creative team behind the show, Zoe Yingying Xie and Yaqi Sun, to find out more.

What can audiences expect from the show? 

Zoe: Late Night Submarine is a sound-led immersive experience that invites you to slip into a dreamlike underwater world built from memory, imagination, and sound. Inspired by the novel Nighttime Submarine, the show follows a young girl who escapes constant conflict at home by imagining herself in the quiet sanctuary of a deep-sea submarine.

Wearing silent disco headphones, audiences drift through a series of intimate, atmospheric spaces where layered soundscapes and soft lighting transform everyday noises; family arguments, rain, market chatter, into deep-sea echoes and fragmented childhood memories.

It’s a multisensory journey through stillness and reflection, where each audience member brings their own emotions to the experience. Late Night Submarine offers not only an escape from the noise of daily life, but also a poetic, deeply personal meditation on how we carry and reshape memory. It’s quiet, it’s gentle, and unlike anything you’ve experienced before.

Is Camden Fringe going to be the show’s first time on stage, or have you already performed elsewhere?

Zoe: Late Night Submarine was previously shared in a short-form version at the Side/Step Festival, where it was performed twice and received heartfelt feedback from audiences. That early showcase allowed us to test our core ideas, especially around sound and space, and confirmed the emotional resonance of the piece.

Camden Fringe will mark the first time the full-length version of Late Night Submarine is performed. We chose Camden Fringe because of its support for bold, experimental work and its welcoming platform for emerging voices. It’s the perfect place for us to unveil the completed journey and invite audiences into our submerged world for the very first time.

What was your inspiration behind the show?

Yaqi: Late Night Submarine was inspired by the novel Nighttime Submarine by Chen Chun-cheng. The story’s quiet, expansive imagination, where a kid pilots a submarine through the night with companion Pikachu, sparked something deeply personal. It wasn’t about plot, but about a state of mind: the longing to drift away from reality into a world of your own making.

That idea of building an inner sanctuary through fantasy and sound became the foundation of the piece.

How long have you been working on the play?

Yaqi: I began developing Late Night Submarine during my first term at Central, in late 2024. Over the past months, I’ve continued shaping the piece through workshops, feedback, and an early sharing at a festival, gradually refining it into what it is today.

Is this version how you originally envisioned it or has it changed drastically since you first put pen to paper?

Yaqi: The project has evolved a lot since the beginning. It started as a short 15-minute fragment, more of a mood piece than a full narrative. As the three of us began developing it together, we kept building on the original atmosphere, adding new scenes, emotional layers, and more detailed soundscapes. 

What brought you all together?

Zoe: I’ve worked with Yaqi since before we graduated from university in Nanjing, our first collaboration was also her mainstage directing debut. Over time, we’ve developed a strong creative shorthand.
Ali, Yaqi’s classmate at Central, joined early in the process and has supported the project from its first test run. We’re now a tight-knit team of three with a shared vision.

Being a fringe festival, we all know sets have to be bare minimum, how have you got around this with your set and props?

Zoe: Late Night Submarine is designed to be lightweight and flexible. Instead of a traditional set, we work with sound, light, and textured materials to shape atmosphere. The audience wears silent disco headphones, so most of the “world-building” happens through audio and subtle environmental shifts. It’s minimal by design, but still immersive and emotionally rich.

How important is audience interaction to you?

Zoe: Audience interaction is central to the experience, but not in the traditional sense. We’re not asking people to speak or perform; instead, we invite them to drift, listen, and feel. Each person’s emotional response becomes part of the piece. It’s about creating space for quiet reflection, where the audience isn’t performing for others, but tuning into themselves. That kind of gentle, internal interaction is what makes Late Night Submarine meaningful.

If you could perform this show anywhere in the world where would it be?

Yaqi: I’d love to perform inside the office buildings of tech giants like ByteDance or Alibaba. These are places filled with people chasing so-called success; long hours, high pay, constant pressure, while slowly disconnecting from their childhood dreams and inner peace. I want them to step into this quiet, underwater world and realize how far they’ve drifted from what once mattered. Ideally, they’d leave the show questioning everything… maybe even quit their jobs and start looking for something more meaningful.

If budget or reality was not an issue, what’s the one piece of scenery/set you’d love to have in your show?

Yaqi: A 360-degree projection dome that simulates being deep underwater, complete with drifting light beams, floating particles, and shifting shadows. The audience would feel like they’re truly inside a submarine dream, surrounded by a living, breathing ocean of memory and sound. It would blur the line between reality and imagination, just like the show itself.

What’s the most valuable piece of advice you’ve received during your career, and how has it influenced your work on this show?

Yaqi: “If your ambition exceeds your ability, your work becomes shallow. If your ego exceeds your craft, your work becomes mediocre. And if you’re lazy, you simply won’t have any work at all.”

That advice reminded me to stay grounded, keep creating, and let the work speak. Late Night Submarine started as a class exercise, then became a short fragment, and eventually grew into a full piece. I’ve learned that the only way to move forward is to keep making—no matter how small the start.

Thanks to Zoe and Yaqi for chatting to us about their show. Late Night Submarine will play at The Libra Theatre Cafe on Friday 23 and Sunday 24 August.