When your children come in from a long day scavenging for food in the irradiated exurbs and ask for a story while the family is gathered around the meager rubbage fire in the gunshot-punctuated evening, what better one to share than the tale of how you and your partner were first brought together by the barely-functioning totalitarian state?
This is the fairytale romance that you live as a member of the audience at Future Mate, a participatory theater experience that sets you in a wonderfully awkward dating event thrown by a comically despotic government organization seeking to unite the few remaining fertile singles of a fractured world.
First conceived at the Storycode Storyhack at Lincoln Center in April of 2012, Future Mate has since been significantly fleshed out into a much fuller piece with a few great hooks. From the moment you’re brought into the theater and asked to submit to a battery of invasive questions the built world of the piece remains coherent: it feels simultaneously current, relevant, and absurd through a skillful tapping of the bizarre experiences we now willingly submit ourselves to in the world of online dating and drone strikes. I don’t want to give away their better tricks, but expect to whip out your phone at least once.
In charge of this demented game show are Gyda Arber, Brian Fountain, and Allen Hahn. Each brings the endearing enthusiasm of someone who has drunk the kool-aid of their own story. Running for four 11pm shows (Nov. 2, 9, 16, and 23) at the intimate Brick Theater in Williamsburg, I highly recommend bringing your latest Tinder match for a meta date, and sticking around when it migrates to Brooklyn Star afterwards.
Future Mate
11pm on November 2, 9, 16, and 23
at the Brick Theater, 579 Metropolitan Ave. at Lorimer
Facebook:Â facebook.com/futuremate
Tickets:Â https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/929454