Jan 23—26, 2020
The ShadowWhose Prey The Hunter Becomes
Back to Back Theatre / Australia
Second ButtonWhat’s so artificial about intelligence, anyway?
When a group of activists with intellectual disabilities holds a public meeting, they discover a history they would prefer not to know, and a future that is ambivalent. As the frank, funny and challenging conversation jumps from topic to topic — factory farming, human rights, the social impact of automation — the presence of an artificial intelligence in the room expands, begging the question: Who precisely is the fittest to survive in the age of AI? The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes takes audiences on a journey to remind us all that no one is completely self-sufficient.
This original, imaginative work comes to Boston courtesy of one of Australia’s most recognized and respected contemporary theatre companies. Committed to inclusion for people with disabilities, Back to Back Theatre brings audiences into the world of accessibility and inaccessibility via performers whose real lives intersect with those precise issues on a daily basis.
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Info
Venue
Emerson Paramount Center
Jackie Liebergott Black Box
559 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02111
Dates
Jan 23, 2020 - Jan 26, 2020
Details
70 minutes
Tickets from $25
Ages 14+
Contains adult themes and coarse language.
“POTENT ART. “
— New England Theatre Geek
“EYE-OPENING … AN EXTRAORDINARY PLAY. Its sideways development is astonishingly artful. What’s more, it is artful in a way specific to the cognitive profiles of the actors involved. If it moves in unfamiliar ways and is delivered through unfamiliar means, that is a sign that it is delivering new information. These artists are not just making theater that affirms their life experience. They are showing the rest of us how their life experience AFFIRMS, AND ENHANCES, THE THEATER.”
— New York Times
“★★★★★
LUMINESCENT!
It’s a piece of unexpectedly brilliant theater about which giving too much away would undermine its maximum effect. Don’t let the initially pretentious-sounding title put you off. By the time the import from Australia finishes, its meaning is all too clear and gorgeously pertinent and pungent. Saying anything more detailed than artificial intelligence and its eventual widespread ramifications is a strong focus risks giving away the solar-plexus wallop that ‘The Shadow’ delivers. AN INDISPUTABLE MUST-SEE.”
— New York Stage Review
“THE BEST PIECE I’VE SEEN IN THE FESTIVAL SO FAR.
Australia’s Back to Back Theatre worked with a
company of intellectually disabled actors to devise
A BEAUTIFULLY SCRIPTED PIECE. FINELY STRUCTURED AND PERFORMED.”
— Vulture
“MASTERFUL. STRIKINGLY CLEVER.
Feels so natural and rooted in reality
that it’s hard to believe it’s a devised
work of fiction and theatre.”
— Broadway World
“The festival’s most rewarding in its complexity. The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes is very much about the audience. I wondered: How did they read my mind? This quartet of characters doesn’t include heroes or victims or saints and the play relishes in catching the audience in the act of attaching such labels to the performers.”
— Slant Magazine
“★★★★ Offers an urgent and uncompromising conversation about the state of humanity with a seamless interplay between creativity and critique”
— The Age (Australia)
“★★★★ Provocative and will leave you with questions. It’ll also make you want to tell your friends to go see it. Now.”
— The Music (Australia)
“Back to Back delights in braiding dreamlike, slow-motion dialogue with deadpan comedy, or vigorous physical fracas with heartbreaking monologues.”
— The Saturday Paper
“a brilliant, extremely well-made piece”
— Audience Member, Facebook