2021
created by Cole Lewis, Patrick Blenkarn, Sam Ferguson
UPCOMING
December 11-12, 2025, Toronto
January 9-18, 2026, New York City
January 23-24, 2026, Vancouver
what does being (a)live look like?
Then as regards the actual connection between spirit & body I consider that the body by reason of being a living body can “attract” & hold on to a “spirit” whilst the body is alive & awake the two are firmly connected & when the body is asleep I cannot guess what happens but when the body dies the “mechanism” of the body, holding the spirit is gone & the spirit finds a new body sooner or later perhaps immediately.
As regards the question of why we have bodies at all; why we do not or cannot live free as spirits & communicate as such, we probably could do so but there would be nothing whatsoever to do. The body provides something for the spirit to look after & use. — Alan Turing
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
Produced by Guilty by Association
Co-Produced by The Elbow Theatre and 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
Produced by Guilty by Association
Co-Produced by The Elbow Theatre and the National Arts Centre of Canada’s National Creation Fund
Developed with the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Tarragon Theatre, and Playwrights Workshop Montreal.
Developed in part through Mitu’s Artists at Home and presented in part by Mitu’s Expansion Works.
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
Created with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Tarragon Theatre, Playwrights Workshop Montreal, and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Design + Technology Lab.