The cast of An Ark in rehearsal: from left, Rosie Sheehy, Arinzé Kene, Ian McKellen, and Golda Rosheuvel.
Photo: Tin Drum
THE FUTURE OF THEATER IS HERE — and it’s a SHAMELESS, SOULLESS SCAM. For a staggering price, audiences are being STRAPPED INTO CHAIRS, forced to surrender their shoes and glasses, and plugged into a Virtual Reality nightmare starring prerecorded holograms of Ian McKellen and other stars. This isn’t innovation; it’s a DISTURBING tech demo masquerading as art, and it’s KILLING live performance.
For 47 minutes of BANAL, CLICHÉ-RIDDEN monologue, you are lectured by digital ghosts about “the sweet taste of pineapple juice.” The experience is so profoundly ISOLATING and EMPTY that one stunned audience member was left whispering, “What are we clapping for?” The producers boast this “mixed reality” brings us “closer to the truth of ourselves.” The ONLY truth revealed is a devastating one: we are so desperate for novelty we will pay to be rendered passive, silent, and ALONE in a crowd.
MEANWHILE, in the gritty, underfunded corners of the city’s festival scene, REAL theater is bursting with life, passion, and human connection. In a Sunset Park warehouse, a stunning show called *The Mushroom* transforms dancers into organic, pulsating creatures using nothing but yarn and imagination. At La MaMa, a cancelled visa crisis sparked an impromptu feast where strangers shared hummus, stories, and a bouncy castle slide. THIS is the vibrant, urgent, RISK-TAKING art that billionaire-funded institutions like The Shed are SYSTEMATICALLY ERASING with their cold, corporate tech experiments.
“An Ark” is a HARBINGER of a terrifying cultural shift: where shared, breathing humanity is replaced by sterile, pre-packaged digital consumption. It’s the final surrender to the algorithm, a world where even our collective stories are delivered through a headset. As patrons dutifully applauded the empty air where a performance should have been, a chilling question hung in the room: are we celebrating art, or are we simply CLAPPING FOR OUR OWN OBSOLESCENCE?
Author: Kayitsi.com
