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.

Note: 2021 includes flashing lights, audience participation, violence, crude language, references to war, racism, and sexism. Participation and active spectatorship is a central part of 2021.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Cole Lewis (she/her) is a mom and mad theatre artist from St. Catharines, Ontario. She specializes in creating live performance from design ideas, exploring new modes of storytelling, and fusing technologies to the stage. Her practice includes directing, playwriting, and the design of moving image works. Twice nominated for Dora-Awards, Cole’s practice uses humour, design, and technology to explore notions of class and violence, expose questions of bias, and unsettle standard conceptions of ‘truth’ to explore alternative futures. She has an MFA in Directing from Yale and her thoughts on performance have been shared at LMDA, Howlround, FOLDA, Yale CCAM, and Canadian Theatre Review.

Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. His research-based practice revolves around the themes of language, labour, and democracy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books, with subjects as diverse as the labour of donkeys to the valuation of art to historical date farming practices in Iraq. He is a polyglot, programmer, animator, musician, and stage director. He is also the co-creator of asses.masses and co-founder of videocan, the national video archive of performance documentation.

Sam Ferguson is an award-winning sound designer/composer from Toronto. After moving to Vancouver to study under acclaimed electroacoustic music composer Berry Truax he returned to Toronto where he became involved with theatre. This experience led him to enroll in the Yale School of Drama where he received an MFA for sound design. Since graduating he has returned to Toronto and has been working in the industry ever since. In addition to his theatrical work Sam has also been involved with audio postproduction on several documentaries/films, teaching microphone technique at Toronto Metropolitan University as well as the development of creative digital signal processing. Previous credits include The Visit (Iseman Theater), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Centaur Theatre), 1991 (The Theatre Centre), and more.

Guilty by Association (GbA) is an interdisciplinary performance collective that shifts its process with each new project. Led by Co-Artistic Directors, Cole Lewis + Patrick Blenkarn, they seek to expand what theatre can do, devising work from design ideas, exploring modes of storytelling, and scheming to fuse media to the stage.

The Elbow Theatre dissects the human condition. We develop shows that question accepted truths. Our productions engage our audiences with the realities of our world. Through process and production, The Elbow presents theatre that promotes caring for, and understanding of, each other. The Elbow was founded in 2012 by Itai Erdal and is based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Driven by a commitment to innovation, Mitu expands the definition of theater through methodical experimentation with the form. Founded in 1997, we are an artist-led organization that frames artmaking as a mode of research and inquiry. We share knowledge, spark dialogue, and strengthen our community through cultivating radical ways of reimagining our world. Mitu embodies this by way of our productions and exhibitions, trans-global research initiatives, artist support opportunities, education programs galvanizing the next generation of artists, and the curated programming of Mitu580, our venue in Brooklyn, N.Y. Mitu’s founding Artistic Director Rubén Polendo, and Co-Artistic Director Justin Nestor, lead an interdisciplinary group of company members in building bridges across ideas, cultures, and communities.  Mitu’s Expansion Works program presents artists whose work intersects new media, visual art, music, film, and performance.

CREDITS

FUNDING + SUPPORT

A Mitu Expansion Work.
Produced by Guilty by Association.
Co-Produced by The Elbow Theatre + National Arts Centre of Canada’s National Creation Fund.
Developed in part through Mitu’s Artists at Home and presented in part by Mitu’s Expansion Works.

Mitu is able to operate its programming at Mitu580 and beyond thanks to generous support from: The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The New York Community Trust, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Trust for Mutual Understanding, MidAtlantic Arts Foundation, The MAP Fund, The Nancy Friday Foundation, CEC Artslink, The Awesome Foundation, A.R.T. NY, Broadway Green Alliance, Emma A. Sheafer Charitable Trust, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Indie Theater Fund, American Theatre Wing, Larry and Helayne Jones Family Fund, Tom and Margie Gart Family Fund, Network of Ensemble Theaters, U.S. Department of State, our Board of Trustees, and our many individual donors.

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