I sat down with writer Caroline Kriesen to find out more about Forever Hold Your Peace coming to The Hen & Chickens Theatre this November.

Can you tell me a little about your show and what audiences can expect?

Forever Hold Your Peace is a post-pandemic romantic tragedy. It takes place in London, five years post-COVID. A young couple prepares for their perfect wedding, but their best friend’s return from the States changes everything.

I’d place it as an intersection between a romantic comedy, a sociopolitical commentary and a very bleak family drama. I love American romantic comedies, I love sociology and politics, and I love really uncomfortable, sort of darkly funny, plays. So if you like one of those, you’ll probably like at least a third of the play.

What drew you to this specific story?

In November 2025, I wrote a little two-person scene debating monogamy. My whole feed was weddings, weddings, weddings, and yet my parents were going through a (very civil, but sort of unexpected) late-life divorce. As a result, I was totally preoccupied with monogamy and marriage. I expanded the scene into a full play with four people untangling messy history and love triangles, and I called it “Marriage Play.” As I continued developing it, I realised I was writing a play about grief.

At the time, I was also struggling through a sudden agonising tragedy. (Like, finally-go-to-therapy-and-rehash-it-with-a-stranger-level bad). I had a hard time socialising, especially at any big event. (Like a wedding.) I couldn’t explain what I felt, or the person I had become. By writing a complex and rich ensemble in Forever Hold Your Peace, I could start to portray how grief had changed me.

I also started to realise why I incorporated the pandemic into the narrative. The pandemic erased and escalated every element of my characters’ lives. The pandemic changed everything, and yet we don’t know how to talk about it. I found a real parallel to that and my own grief. I explored how my characters each coped with the aftermath of their trauma, and I found that it all came back to love.

I believe that after any unexpected loss, people change their openness to love, for better or for worse. I am portraying that phenomenon in Forever Hold Your Peace.

What excites you about bringing this to life as a rehearsed reading? What opportunities does this present?

I love hearing actors read a play for the first time. As a writer, you spend so much time on your own with your characters, and you think you know exactly who they are. But giving it away to the next stage with directors and actors, it evolves naturally, and it becomes a collective work. Since I tend to write quite personal pieces, it’s really special to work with people who believe in your work and transform it into a collective experience. We have a wonderful team for this reading, and I’ve loved making this story ours.

What are your hopes for this show?

I am hoping for the play to have a fully staged production in the next few years. It’s a larger ensemble, and I’m an early-career playwright, so that’s always tricky to get to the next stage! But readers and collaborators have told me how much it resonates with them, so hopefully they are being honest and not nice, and hopefully it bears well for the future of the piece.

Ultimately, my hope is that the play reaches people it is supposed to reach. Theatre connects us. And loss is so isolating. So really, my hope is that the characters and the story create a shared understanding of how loss can affect people, and how we can open ourselves up to loving each other, even if it’s not forever.

If you could sum up the show in one word or phrase, what would it be and why?

Forever Hold Your Peace looks at how trauma impacts our openness to love.

I address monogamy and marriage because these are the acceptable societal institutions of romantic love. Each of the characters has individual opinions on these institutions, and the play doesn’t oppose or support them. Instead, it explores how people might cling to or oppose those structures in reaction to trauma, rather than what is right for them. Tragedy made me think a lot about love, and for that, I am grateful.

I hope Forever Holds Your Peace allows people to embrace the love that is right for them, even in the face of incredibly un-fun times.

Forever Hold Your Peace runs at The Hen &Chickens Theatre, London, on 22 November. Tickets available at https://unrestrictedview.co.uk/events/forever-hold-your-peace