2021
created by Cole Lewis, Patrick Blenkarn, Sam Ferguson
Come for a sneak peek!
Set to premiere at New York City’s Under the Radar Festival and Vancouver’s PuSh Festival in 2026.
“A technological visual display.”
— Intermission Magazine
Showings:
December 11 & 12, 2025 — 7:00 PM
The Chrysalis, The Creative School (43 Gerrard Street East, Toronto)
RSVP to chrysalis@torontomu.ca
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
EARLY PHASE COLLABORATORS Emma Cuzzocrea, Ezri Fenton, Laura Maieron, Shaan Tahir-Mehdi, and Daibei Wang
PRODUCTION + DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
2022.8.15-2022.8.30 | Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, New Haven, USA
2023.7.30-12.31 | Tarragon Theatre Greenhouse Residency, Toronto, CA
2024.1.11-20 | Tarragon Theatre Greenhouse Festival, Toronto, CA
2023.1.22-1.24 | Nightswimming Theatre Pure Research Workshops, Toronto, CA
2024.8.5-16 | Theater Mitu Artists at Home Residency, Brooklyn, USA
2024.9.1-2025.9.1 | Playwrights Workshop Montreal Residency, Montreal, CA
2025.6.1-8 | Festival of Live Digital Art Residency and Performance, Kingston, CA
2025.7.2-13 | Brock University, St. Catharine’s, CA
2025.10.11-16 | Theater im Pumpenhaus Residency, Münster, DE
2025.12.8-12 | TMU Chrysalis Residency, Toronto, CA
Artist Talks and Workshops focusing on 2021
2024.10.22 Artist Talk, Queens University, Kingston
2024.6.14 Artist Talk, FOLDA/Howlround, Kingston
2024.2.1 Artist Talk, RUBIX, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto
2024.1.24, Workshop, Nightswimming Pure Research, Toronto
2023.11.2, Artist Talk, Machine as Medium Symposium, Yale CCAM, New Haven
Press and Publications focusing on 2021
“2021: Reflections on a Work in Process” The CCAM Maquette: Machine as Medium, Yale University (upcoming publication)
10 Toronto Stage Artists To Keep An Eye On This Winter
The good and the bad (and everything in between)
Review: Tarragon’s Greenhouse Festival grows works-in-progress with audience
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Produced by Guilty by Association
Co-Produced by The Elbow Theatre and the 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.
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, and BMO Lab