Co-produced by Guilty by Association and The Elbow Theatre
Presented with PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
2021
Created by Cole Lewis, Patrick Blenkarn, Sam Ferguson
JANUARY 23 & 24, 2026
Under the glow of a flickering screen, a daughter questions the worth of her father’s legacy. 2021 is a live performance where story, video games, and AI collide, blurring the line between memory and simulation.
On stage, an audience member takes on the role of Brian, an unhoused veteran, reliving his final weeks in a New Jersey hospital. Each choice shapes his story, narrated live by his daughter. As the performance shifts, reality fractures. Brian’s voice returns—not quite human, not entirely gone. 2021 asks: If we could bring back the dead, even as data, should we?
WHERE
ADDRESS
823 Seymour St
Run Time
90-120 minutes
SHOWTIMES: TBD
CONTENT INFO
Audience Participation: This performance includes audience participation and interaction. A few volunteers from the audience will be invited on stage to participate as “players”, and everyone is encouraged to talk and engage with the “player” on stage on what to do/not to do.
Technical Elements: The show is also a video game. Watching the player navigate may cause motion sickness. There may be strobe lights or other bright flashes.
Audience Advice: Players will navigate a hospital environment and encounter a horror level with a point-shooter game. Topics include: war, violence, divisive politics, terminal illness, pancreatic cancer, death, grief, AI ethics, racism, misogyny, and being unhoused.
Presented with:
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
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, Theater im Pumpenhaus, and BMO Lab
EARLY PHASE COLLABORATORS Emma Cuzzocrea, Ezri Fenton, Laura Maieron, Shaan Tahir-Mehdi, and Daibei Wang
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.
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 (he/him) 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.
