The Map and The Echo

Come in. Sit down. Explore.

The Map and the Echo is part-performance, part game… an interactive journey through the British Library, exploring how people make maps and how maps make places.

After viewing the Secret Maps exhibition, an audio tour will guide you through the Library, imagining the unseen areas of the landmark building and its ever-growing collections.

The audio tour leads to a performance, where a man stands on a bare stage and describes another place: a version of the British Library that may or may not exist.

Inspired by choose-your-own-adventure stories and early text-adventure computer games, each performance is unique, shaped by your choices. Using simple instructions like ‘Go North’ or ‘Pick up the lamp’, the audience works together to navigate this other place, overcoming obstacles and exploring the Library… without leaving your seat.

The Map and the Echo is a new edition in Seth Kriebel’s acclaimed series of Exploration Games, created specially for the British Library and Secret Maps.

Critical response to Kriebel’s Exploration Games:

‘★★★★★ Turns the concept of immersive theatre on its head’  
- Londonist

‘★★★★ Delivers both laughter and poetry'  
- The Stage

‘A gently fascinating interactive world… it’s funny, too.’ 
- Time Out

‘[We] get drawn deeper and deeper into Kriebel’s impressively detailed imaginary adventure world.’ 
- The Telegraph, on We This Way

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