A House Divided - A Drama In One Act

by Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton

In the summer of 2018 we were writing episodes for Inside No 9 series 5 and decided to set one entirely in a theatre auditorium. The idea was that we never focus on the play, only on the people watching and their interactions. We were aware of cost implications of having to at least partially fill an auditorium but thought that there would be such a small design cost that it might offset it in the budget, Sadly we were told by our producers that the expense of hiring a theatre for a week and getting enough people to sit in it would be too much fir our budget so 'A House Divided' was shelved and we wrote 'The Stakeout' instead. Two people in a car. When we started to think of ideas for an Inside No 9 stage show we pulled this script from the bottom drawer, thinking it might be a fun way to begin: an audience watching an audience. We hope you enjoy reading the full version.

Dedicated to Paul Darrow, 1941-2019

31 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2025

Reviews

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having studied adaptation / transposition, it is so interesting to see how ‘A House Divided’ went from possible pilot, to discarded script, to revised scene in the Stage/Fright tour. An additional point from me for being Shakespeare adjacent.

[Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

i knew about the celeb cameo part of stage/fright before we went to see it so i’d been joking with my girlfriend all day that it was going to be a certain scottish dr who actor that im obsessed with. and so you can imagine the gasp i let out when i opened this in the interval and saw peter capaldi’s name lmao

anyway really interesting to read an unmade inside no 9 episode! didn’t think it was one of their best but it is a shame we never got to see it on screen, its a really fun concept. really enjoyed how they adapted it for the play though