2021
Northwestern University Chicago Campus – Abbott Hall Wirtz Theatre
710 N DuSable Lake Shore Dr.
Chicago, IL 60611
Northwestern University Chicago Campus – Abbott Hall Wirtz Theatre
710 N DuSable Lake Shore Dr.
Chicago, IL 60611
Northwestern University Chicago Campus – Abbott Hall Wirtz Theatre
710 N DuSable Lake Shore Dr.
Chicago, IL 60611
Northwestern University Chicago Campus – Abbott Hall Wirtz Theatre
710 N DuSable Lake Shore Dr.
Chicago, IL 60611
Runs Nov 12Nov 14, 2026

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.

Created by Cole Lewis, Patrick Blenkarn, Sam Ferguson
Produced by Guilty by Association
Co-produced by The Elbow Theatre and STUDIO FUNFUG