In Danish ‘rum’ means ‘space’ and ‘room’, and ‘mur’ means ‘wall’ – Rum/muR is thus a word construction that is not possible in an English-language translation. However, for the purposes of this play it should be borne in mind that the space would not be that space without the wall around it, and there would be no call for the walls were they not there to define the space. Caracters Landlord (70), Man (30), Woman in the block (30). A single-storey house with a basement, in which the action takes place. In the basement there is a large block on which is engraved: The room is stronger than the walls. The basement is sparse and clinical, looks like a mausoleum. The block is approx. 4x4 metres, 1 metre high and resembles a gravestone. The Man has rented a two-room basement apartment in a house. It turns out that the apartment consists of one room with what looks like a big concrete block in the middle. The Man complains that the apartment only has one room and not two, but the Landlord brush- es aside the complaint on the basis that the block is the other room. The Landlord, who owns the house and lives on the first floor, designed the building himself. He thinks that his architectural plan is a good solution to the shortage of space and housing, as the rooms make room for each other. The Man looks for a door into the block. There is no door, so he decides to make one. The Landlord stops him, saying that the block is a conservation area. The block is the load-bearing room and the load-bearing walls for the whole house. It is a sacred stone, the soul of the house and its very foundations. The Man wants to know if the block is hollow or solid, as he’s not prepared to pay rent for a solid room he can’t get into. The Land- lord maintains that the room is hollow. The Man can’t understand how the block can be load-bearing if it’s hollow. The Landlord explains to the Man that the room is stronger than the walls. In an attempt to control a room we erect walls and divide the space into smaller portions, so that it’s easier for us to cope with, but the room is self-contained and doesn’t need the outer frame- work we assign it. The Man wants to pull down the room, if the walls are surplus to requirements anyway, but the Landlord ex- plains that if we don’t let walls provide us with a framework then everything just gets vague and woolly and it’s hard to differentiate between time and space. The Man, who is an architect, decides to use the surface of the block as his office, even though he can’t stand up on it without banging his head on the ceiling. He devises a work schedule, which he follows meticulously. Moreover, he uses each side of the block as the foundations for four new rooms. Every time the Man turns a corner he reaches an arm out sideways – checking that he is going into a new room, so as not to mix up the different rooms. The Landlord realises that the two-room apartment has turned into a five-room apartment, and he says he will put up the rent. One day the Man hears a sound coming from inside the block. Next night the sound is that of a woman talking to him. The Woman keeps him awake night after night. She only appears when he goes to bed and he becomes totally captivated by her. He becomes dis- tracted and his daily routines are increasingly disrupted. The Wo- man asks him to let her out of the block. She says that she wants to be where there is light and air, with nothing blocking the view. The Man, who has been working on the designs for a series of small detached houses, decides that he will design a high-rise block instead, using the block as its foundation. He will build it and live in the top room with the Woman. Rather than letting the Woman out of the block, he feels inspired by her vision of freedom. The Landlord senses a very clear change in the Man: having once been neat and tidy, now everything around him is a mess. When the Man moved into the house it was the Landlord who was indiffe- rent to life, but the Man’s company has gradually restored the Landlord’s quality of life. The Landlord is therefore worried about the Man, who tells him about the Woman. The Landlord contacts the Woman in the block. It was him, 40 years ago, who had bricked her into the block. At that time they had been lovers. They had very different temperaments. Where the Woman thought “room” and saw opportunities, the Landlord thought “wall” and saw limitations. The Woman had no sense of her freedom without limits and she had asked him to give her some fixed parameters – which he did, with the very best of intentions, by bricking her into the block. He gave her the filter she had never had, but she had never wanted to see the world through his eyes. In spite of the fact that the Landlord bricked the Woman into the block, he is not aware that he has actually killed her. He thinks that she broke out of the block and left him, which he presumes is the reason he hasn’t heard from her for 40 years. That is why he re- fers to the room as being stronger than the walls, which was origi- nally the Woman’s contention. The Landlord asks why the Woman has returned after so many years. The Woman thinks that only a couple of days have passed since she was bricked in, and says that she has never left the basement. When the Landlord tells her that 40 years have gone by, they both realise that she is dead – and that she is a ghost. The Woman now wants more than ever to be let out, but the Land- lord decides to pretend none of it ever happened and to support the Man in his project to build a high-rise block on top of the actual block. The more bricks hiding the Woman the better. The Man tells the Woman that he is building a room for them, as high up as she could wish, but the Woman says that the room she wants to get out into cannot be built. She wants to go to the room without walls, the outermost room – so far away that, no matter how high the Man builds into the skies, his bricks would never reach. She asks him to release her but, just like the Landlord, he can’t bring himself to let her go – she is his foundation. The Landlord confides in the Man that it was he who bricked in the Woman and now, at this very moment, the Man realises that the Woman is dead. The Man reproaches the Landlord for killing her, as that means he will never have the chance of a life together with her. The Man wants to move out there and then, even though the Landlord asks him to stay – he does not want to be left alone again. The Man refuses to stay and so, in his impotence, the Land- lord kills the Man too. When the Woman next appears in a vision, she invites the Man to come with her to the room without walls. The Woman says that the room is stronger than the walls and the soul is stronger than the body. Next time the Landlord comes to the basement he can’t make con- tact with the Woman, and the Man’s body has also vanished. He destroys the block and lies down in the ruins.