2021
Under the glow of a flickering screen, a daughter reconstructs her deceased father. Pixel by pixel, contradiction by contradiction.
2021 is a live performance where theatre, AI, and video-game storytelling converge, blurring the boundary between human remembrance and machine logic. An audience member steps into the role of Brian, an unhoused veteran reliving his final weeks inside a looping digital hospital: a labyrinth of corridors, bureaucratic dead ends, and fleeting human contact. Guided by his daughter’s narration, fragments of data become playable memory. Each decision glitches reality a little more.
How do we provide dignity in death to those we fundamentally disagree with? Part elegy, part experiment, 2021 exposes the tenderness and terror of digital resurrection. It asks not whether machines can think, but whether memory itself is a kind of simulation.
TEAM
CO-CREATION, DATA CURATION, PERFORMANCE Cole Lewis
CO-CREATION, PROGRAMMING, PERFORMANCE Patrick Blenkarn
CO-CREATION, PROGRAMMING, MUSIC + SOUND DESIGN Sam Ferguson
3D MODELLING AND ENVIRONMENTS Eric Ing
2D ILLUSTRATION AND ANIMATION Clarissa Picolo
LIGHTING DESIGN Itai Erdal
SCENIC DESIGN Helen Yung
PROJECTION DESIGN + TECHNOLOGIST Wladimiro A. Woyno R.
CHOREOGRAPHY Heidi Strauss
TECHNICAL DIRECTION Alex Grozdanis
AI CONSULTANT David Rokeby
DISABILITY PRODUCER Anika Vervecken
DRAMATURGICAL CONSULTANT Fatma Sarah Elkashef
SHOW OPERATORS Sam Ferguson, Alex Grozdanis, Christopher-Elizabeth
EARLY PHASE COLLABORATORS Emma Cuzzocrea, Ezri Fenton, Laura Maieron, Shaan Tahir-Mehdi, and Daibei Wang
Produced by Guilty by Association
Co-Produced by STUDIO FUNFUG
Developed in association with the National Arts Centre of Canada’s National Creation Fund
Developed in part through Mitu’s Artists at Home and Expansion Works
Developed with the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Tarragon Theatre, Nightswimming Theatre, Design + Technology Lab, The Chrysalis, DART at Brock University, Playwrights Workshop Montreal, Precursor Lab, BMO Lab, The Elbow Theatre