1. WHAT IS 2021?

2021 is a live narrated video game designed for a participatory performance, accompanied by live music.

2021 is a collaborative storytelling event between performers, audience members, and AI.

2021 is an exploration of the significance of human data and the challenges of preserving dignity in death for those we fundamentally disagree with.

2. THE STORY

Brian was many things:
He was Canadian. He was American.
He loved socialist healthcare. He was a Republican.
He was a homeowner. He died unhoused.
He was a proud Vietnam veteran. He suffered from PTSD and feared war.
He was a technology enthusiast. He could barely use a remote control.
He was an abandoned child. He was a father who abandoned his children.

A right-wing American man is dying and his left-wing Canadian daughter tells his story. Together, they navigate what it means to die in an age when human data can be used to revive loved ones after they are gone. 2021 asks: How do we provide dignity in death to someone we fundamentally disagree with?

The performance unfolds through a video game played on stage by one audience member as a stand-in for Cole's unhoused Veteran father, Brian. In playing the game, the player reenacts Brian's final weeks in a New Jersey hospital, with Cole live narrating the journey, accompanied by a live musician. As the player encounters different obstacles and objects in the hospital, the audience—who freely offers advice to the player—becomes the player's caregiver and, by extension, a stand-in for Cole as she cared for her Trump-supporting father via mediated technology.

Upon winning the game, the story concludes with the appearance of a fully functioning 3D virtual AI Brian trained on his life’s documents. Cole and the AI version of her father improvise a conversation about the significance of his human data and whether Brain’s data is worth saving.

3. THE EVENT

2021 is an immersive, live-narrated video game experience where a single courageous audience member, known as Patient 203, navigates a virtual hospital setting with guidance from the audience. During the show, you can expect a 2021 audience to be:

• playing/watching the game for 90-120 minutes

• calling out to offer or request help

• engaging in dialogue with a large language model

• laughing (death can be funny!)

Keys to a successful 2021 experience:

• OPEN DURATION: Once the game starts, the player will take the time it requires to complete the game.  The show cannot be interrupted after it begins and the creators of the project nor staff from the venue will not intervene. It will last approximately 90-120 minutes.

• INTERMISSIONS: There are no intermissions throughout the show.

• SUPPORT: Every show and audience member is different. Whenever possible, we suggest support be offered for audience members who have/had cancer and/or are/were caregivers.

4. TEAM

CO-CREATION, TEXT, PERFORMANCE Cole Lewis (Canada)

CO-CREATION, PROGRAMMING, PERFORMANCE Patrick Blenkarn (Canada)

CO-CREATION, MUSIC + SOUND DESIGN Sam Ferguson (Canada)

DRAMATURGY Fatma Sarah Elkashef (Canada)

SCENIC DESIGN Helen Yung (Canada)

LIGHTING DESIGN Itai Erdal (Canada)

TECHNICAL DIRECTION Alex Grozdanis (Canada)

Co-produced by Guilty by Association and The Elbow Theatre

Developed with the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Tarragon Theatre, and Playwrights Workshop Montreal.

Guilty by Association (GbA) shifts our process with each new project as we conspire with an ever-expanding network of collaborators from far-out disciplines to faraway places. Led by Co-Artistic Directors, Cole Lewis + Patrick Blenkarn, together we 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.

Cole Lewis, Co-Creator/Writer/Performer

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. She is Co-Artistic Director of Guilty by Association. Twice nominated for Dora-Awards, Cole’s practice uses humour, design, and technology to explore notions of 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.

RECENT: Co-created 2021 at Tarragon Theatre’s 2024 Greenhouse Festival. Began a new play about social welfare and neoliberalism at Caravan Farm Theatre’s 2024 National Playwright Retreat. Co-researched Dramaturges of the Unreal through Nightswimming’s 2024 PureResearch. Lead Artist Mentor (2023 + 2024) for Suitcase in the Point’s Electric Innovations program. Attended 2023 LaMama Umbria with Thomas Ostermeier, Iman Aoun, Dmitry Krymov, and Keng Sen Ong. Completed the first draft of Grief Redux for Stratford Festival (seed commission). Adapted Kyo Maclear’s Virginia Wolf for Montreal’s Geordie Theatre. 


SELECT DIRECTING/CREATION: Wrote and directed 1991 which was presented by Why Not Theatre’s RISER Project through Guilty by Association. Conceived and directed these violent delights at SummerWorks. Wrote and directed Moderato Cantabile at SummerWorks. Directed the Canadian premiere of Anne Carson’s Antigonick at SummerWorks. Led the devising process and directed AGMI at ArsNova’s AntFest. Originated the direction and co-wrote Suitcase in Point’s Dora nominated Keith Richards: A One Woman Show.

SELECT INTERDISCIPLINARY: Development Workshop for Untitled Visit, an exploration in VR and MoCap, with GbA and Lauren Dubowski at Yale’s CCAM. Directed Redshift Music Society’s Still Life Continuum at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre. In collaboration with Niagara Artists Centre, directed Canada’s largest wearable art show, STRUTT and The Wine King Parade Float designed by graphic novelist, Seth.

Patrick Blenkarn, Co-Creator/Programmer/Performer

Patrick Blenkarn (Vancouver) 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 economy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books.

His work and collaborations have been featured in performance festivals, galleries, museums, and film festivals, including the Festival TransAmériques (Montreal), the PuSh Festival (Vancouver), Inteatro Festival (Ancona), Mayfest (Bristol), Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, the Humboldt Forum (Berlin), Festival of Live Digital Art (Kingston), STAGES Festival (Halifax), Banff Centre for the Arts, Risk/Reward (Portland), SummerWorks (Toronto), RISER Projects (Toronto), and the Festival of Recorded Movement (Vancouver). In 2020, he was nominated for Best Projection Design at Toronto’s Dora Awards. In 2022, his work with Milton Lim, asses.masses, received the National Creation Fund from the National Arts Centre of Canada.

Patrick has frequently been an artist in residence at galleries and theatres around the world, including The Arctic Circle (Svalbard), the Spitsbergen Artist Center (Svalbard), GlogauAIR (Berlin), Fonderie Darling (Montreal), Malaspina Printmakers (Vancouver), Skaftfell Center for Visual Art (Iceland), VIVO Media Arts (Vancouver), and The Theatre Centre (Toronto).

Patrick is also the co-founder of and a key archivist for videocan, Canada’s video archive of performance documentation. He has a degree in philosophy, theatre, and film from the University of King's College and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. His writings on the politics of theatre have been published in Performance Matters, Theatre Research in Canada, GUTS, SpiderWebShow, and Canadian Theatre Review.

Sam Ferguson, Co-Creator/Sound Designer

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 Wolf (Centaur Theatre), 1991 (The Theatre Centre), Boy’s Girls and other Mythological Creatures (FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre), Philosophers wool (documentary), Love, Oran (Super Channel/ Amazon) and Mom Jail (short, winner of the HFX 72hour film challenge).

Helen Yung, Scenic Designer

Helen Yung is a scenographer and inter/transdisciplinary artist-researcher from Toronto, Canada. Her practice combines design, performance, conceptual art, and social R&D. Projects range from bold experiments in What Art Knows, to installations, interactions, interventions, exhibitions, and performances. 

Helen’s work has been nominated in multiple Toronto Dora Theatre award categories (Costume Design, Scenic Design, Lighting, and Production). Select design credits include: Love You Wrong Time directed by Erin Brubacher for Nightwood Theatre and Bad Muse Productions; Izad Etemadi’s: Let Me Explain directed by Matt White for Green Light Arts; Das Geswicht der Amiesen (The Weight of Ants) directed by Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen for D'Haus (Düsseldorf State Theatre); LULU v. 2 to 7 directed by ted witzel with v.4 directed by Susanna Fournier, for Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the red light district; This Is Why We Live directed by Coleen Macpherson for Open Heart Surgery; and The Youth Elders Project directed by evalyn parry for Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. 

Helen leads the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence, an experimental research group that specializes in transdisciplinary collaborations to reimagine how things work in the world. What Art Has To Offer Immigration has successfully helped new immigrants and refugees become employed full-time in their fields of interest in Canada. What Art Has To Offer Astronomical Thinking is an ongoing collaboration with theoretical astrophysicist Dr. Gurtina Besla. What Art Has To Offer ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies) is her latest project, in collaboration with medical director Dr. Chaula Mehta. Previously, Helen held artist-researcher positions with the Culture of Cities Centre, Dreamwalker Dance Company, and the University of Toronto Scarborough. She is a Salzburg Global Fellow, and a former board member for Social Innovation Canada and the Centre for Social Innovation.

Itai Erdal, Lighting Designer

An award winning lighting designer, photographer, writer and performer, Itai is the founder of The Elbow Theatre in Vancouver, for whom he co-wrote and performed in Soldiers of Tomorrow, Hyperlink, This Is Not A Conversation and A Very Narrow Bridge. 

Itai has designed over 300 shows for theatre, dance and opera companies in over fifty cities around the world. Some of the companies he worked with include: Arts Club Theatre (16 shows), The Stratford Festival (11 shows), New Victory (Off Broadway), The Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Playhouse, Bard on the Beach, The Electric Company, National Arts Centre, Soulpepper, Tarragon, Factory, The Citadel, MTC, The Segal Centre, The Jerusalem Lab, Haifa Theatre, Tamasha, Box Clever and Teatro Villa Velha in Salvador, Brazil. 

He worked with such choreographers as: Crystal Pite, Nigel Charnock, Noam Gagnon, Robert Hylton, Serge Bennathan, Kate Alton, Chick Snipper, Noa Dar, Susan Elliot, Idan Cohen and Toru Shimazaki.

Itai has won six Jessie Richardson Awards, a Dora Mavor Moore Award, a Winnipeg Theatre Award, the Jack King Award, a Guthrie Award, Victoria’s Spotlight Choice Award and the Design Award at the 2008 Dublin Fringe Festival. He was shortlisted to the Siminovitch Prize in 2018. 

Itai’s first one-man show: How to Disappear Completely (The Chop, directed by James Long), premiered in 2011 and had 25 remounts in 21 cities. It won the best director award at the Summerworks Festival in Toronto, and was shortlisted to the Dublin Fringe Award, the Brighton Fringe Award and the Total Theatre Award at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Soldiers of Tomorrow (2023) received Summerhall’s Lustrum Award and was nominated to an Offfest Award at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

5. DOCUMENTATION

PHASE TWO (Residency at MITU580, Brooklyn - August 2024): 5min edit + Full documentation

PHASE ONE (Residency at Tarragon Theatre, Toronto - January 2024) — Photos by Dahlia Katz

Joanna Falck, Soulpepper theatre company

“How much I enjoyed seeing 2021. I could well relate to the hospital maze of offices and doors and difficulty finding help. I loved the mix of technology and memory - how technology recreated memories. And Cole was also a super charming performer! Making anything seem okay and exactly what was supposed to happen.”

Keshia Palm, Paprika Festival

“I really loved the work — it was engaging, and vulnerable, and curious. It is always exciting to see projects and processes that are experimenting so actively with medium and form. I'm so glad I got to see it!”

Alan Dilworth, Necessary Angel Theatre Company

It was a brilliant personal and public theatrical workshop offering, exploring “how might someone’s spirit live on through materials and new technologies?” Dramaturgically deft, it told a deeply humanizing story about our relationship with justice, mental health, class, and technology. It raised complex questions about how we understand ourselves and our loved ones. It also asked who we are once we are gone and what that could mean to those who are left behind. It has the potential to be a truly brilliant and unique piece of theatre.

Hassan Baber Rajput, Muslim International Film Festival

“Loved your show last night. I really liked how you took the audience in on this very personal journey with vulnerability and grace. The projections, live recordings, and especially the red light were such a delightful throughline to the evolution of your work and the themes you feel drawn to tackle. The philosophical questions of how we hold experiences in tangible objects and materials versus the digital realm was also so very interesting and relevant to the modern digital lives of people. I hope it’s supported for further life!”

Deanna Jones, Suitcase in Point

“If someone said to me that a production with an AI character, interactive video games, projections, and enough tech to choke a horse was at the centre of a play, I would never believe how deeply connected I would feel. 2021 is a story about dying and whether we choose to let go or hold on. It was beautifully articulated. The care Cole showed in bringing an objective audience member on stage was incredibly safe and inspiring to witness. The interactivity, humility and rawness brought forward by Cole, in this eclectic, multi-layered style of storytelling was completely enveloping. 2021 needs to live on, evolve and be developed further.”