Created by Zoyander Street. Starring Fadumo Hassan, Xander Graves, and Caitlin Magnall-Kearns.
Hedi (Fadumo Hassan) is a rising star of the tech world, and nobody knows she is secretly an alien anthropologist - except for Tea, who has recently learned the same about themself. Hedi is a successful tech professional, and is optimistic about the future - we’re going to solve all our problems with increasingly powerful technology, just like Star Trek. But when the tech world lets her down, it's up to the audience to decide show she responds.
‘Is Society in the Room with Us Now?’ is a live-digital hybrid, interactive sci-fi comedy about doomerism, neurodiversity / neuroqueerness, and the pain of living in a world that works against your survival. It is the second story for Intrapology, a series of interactive stories that will explore how people make worlds together, through the allegory of the Transdimensional Research Institute. You do not need to have seen episode 1 to follow the story.
Intrapology should appeal to people who listen to Welcome to Night Vale, watch The Good Place, or play Disco Elysium. By taking actions such as voting on dialogue options, the audience guides what the protagonist says, does, and thinks. This will be a mostly unrehearsed live reading, with two actors performing a script that is shaped by messages and votes from the audience via web app.
Upcoming performances
Online with Queerness and Games Conference
Tickets are free for Patreon supporters, or you can make a one-off payment of $10 to access the registration link. If cost is a barrier, get in touch contact [at] intrapology.com
Presented in partnership with Queerness and Games Conference. Made possible by a Project Grant from Arts Council England. Software development supported by Innovate UK. Early development was supported by the Sheffield Theatres Bank Cohort, Barrel Organ Theatre’s Barnsley LIVE, and the New Conversations Canada-UK Exchange (British Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Farnham Maltings, High Commission of Canada in the UK).
‘Is “Society” In The Room With Us Now?’ is Episode 2 of Intrapology, which aims to tell stories about how worlds are made, how they break apart, and how we can reconnect.
Museums Sheffield, Making Ways, November 2024
Intrapology is a live interactive online queer sci-fi performance on the perspectives of neurodivergent queer folk, as alien anthropologists doing fieldwork on earth.
Background
The title of this episode is borrowed from a joke made by transgender media scholar McKenzie Wark in a presentation last year on what she calls the “technics” of gender and sex. “I hate the phrase ‘socially constructed’… saying that something is ‘socially constructed’ to me is the equivalent of saying it comes from God, because where is this ‘social’? Is ‘the social’ in the room with us now?”
