The University of Nottingham proudly presents two groundbreaking Virtual Theatre plays that illustrate like no other the struggles of the times we are living. Produced, designed, adapted and performed by staff, students and alumni of the University of Nottingham Malaysia and China campuses, these two plays, conceived as a dual performance, explore the risks of the dehumanization of our society. The stories resort to technology to bridge physical distance, creating innovative performative languages.

Brave New Normal is the original adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, translocated to a world very similar to ours, in which humankind, for the sake of fairness and safety, lives isolated in an unreal bubble —“the New Normal”—subordinated to its own inventions: science, technology and social organisation. The show was produced during a period of the strictest lockdown, with all the actors performing from their respective bubbles, scattered across Malaysia and China, with no physical interaction.

In COVID 19_84, adaptation to the current times of George Orwell’s masterpiece, technology breaks the boundaries of physical distance to stablish a multiversal narrative, with physical actors, virtual actors and audiences interconnected synchronously in Malaysia and China into a single hybrid-theatre performance. In this play our society is put in front of a distorted mirror, reflecting a world in which people control one another, in which history is rewritten in front of our very own eyes, in which divergency is cancelled, and freedom is forfeited for our own good.

George Orwell and Aldous Huxley conceived their most influential works as a warning. How far are we to embrace their dystopias as our own?

Tickets for the screening at the Hallward Library are free. Covid 19_84 will also be streamed live at https://www.cloudtheatre.com/shows/covid-19-84/ (only at the designated times and dates; available worldwide).

Tickets for the online streaming start at 15RM (GBP 2.7) “Standard”, 30RM (GBP 5.4) “Arts Supporters” and 55RM (GBP 10.1) “Patrons of the Arts”

From Brave New Normal to Covid19_84: Performance