asses.masses

Tomorrow’s the day of the great protest. The unemployed asses of Fannyside Farms and Butte Mines are uniting to march on the nearby village. They have one demand: the humans must give up their machines and give all donkeys their jobs back. But revolution is never that easy. When the herd finds itself in control, the asses must find new ways of working together to survive a world set on forgetting them.

Each night, brave spectators take turns stepping forward to become the players of a custom-made video game. Told across 10 episodes and through a myriad of video game forms, the asses (and the live audience) must work together to confront its growing division between those who, harbouring nostalgia for ‘the old ways’, reject technology and those who embrace technology as an adaptation for surviving the present.

Cheeky, political, and best described as Animal Farm meets Aesop’s Fables retold by Franz Kafka, Karl Marx, and Sonic the Hedgehog, asses.masses puts the control(ler) in its audience’s hands and asks them to explore the space between the work that defines us and the play that frees us.

Developed with support from the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, The Theatre Centre, BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, VIVO Media Arts, the Embassy of Canada to Argentina and Paraguay, and the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund.