Performing Futures: Uninvited Guests’ “Billennium” and “To Those Born Later”

At a time when we are emerging from a pandemic and into a state of human displacement and climate emergency, the partners of Performing Futures are bringing people together in local neighbourhoods and inspire them to imagine better futures, and also meet remotely, through interactive, online performance, to consider what should be passed down from our cities, times and cultures to future generations.
The artistic works in this partnership, Billennium and To Those Born Later, both reflect on the present through the future and use technologies to enable participation. Billennium is an Augmented Reality tour of the future of a place. To Those Born Later is an online show in which people from different countries discuss what should go into a time capsule to be opened in 150 years.
Billennium will tour 3 cities, with new versions adapted for BBK OFF Festival, Bilbao, International Theater Days in Belgrade, and PLACCC Festival, Budapest. To Those Born Later will be performed online 3 times, hosted once by each festival and promoted locally. This will test 2 new approaches to international touring: Billennium explores deeper engagement with communities, leading to a work that is re-made with and for specific neighbourhoods and shown outside in public spaces; To Those Born Later engages local audiences without travelling, facilitating meaningful exchanges across these European contexts.
With the presentation partners of this project, IKUSEEARTE in Spain, Students’ City Cultural Center in Serbia, and Hungary’s Artopolis Association/PLACCC Festival, producers Uninvited Guests, Duncan Speakman and Fuel Theatre aim to establish strong connections between people and places, both locally and internationally.