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What if we could defeat death?

That question is at the heart of Blur, a new extended reality (XR) theatrical experience that combines live performance, motion capture, immersive technologies, and interactive storytelling, integrating the physical and virtual in a seamless mixed-reality format. Co-created and co-directed by Professor of Theatre Craig Quintero and Phoebe Greenberg of Canada’s PHI Studio, Blur explores the emotional and ethical issues of loss, grief, cloning, de-extinction, and immortality.

According to one reviewer who saw the production at the Venice Film Festival in September, Blur is “head-spinningly strange, provocative, and seductive,” as well as “the hottest ticket” at the festival. 

The Future is Present

Blur tells the story of a mother who has lost her child. Advancements in cloning and genetic engineering raise the possibility of cloning her child and bringing him back to life, but should she? Blur is set in the near future, but Quintero says the questions it explores are drawn from current events, such as efforts by the Texas-based company Colossal to “de-extinct” the woolly mammoth by 2028. “I first heard of the idea of resurrection biology in 1993 with Jurassic Park. At the time, it sounded like science fiction, but now it’s reality,” Quintero says.

A Personalized Theatre 

Quintero, who is also the founder and artistic director of Riverbed Theatre in Taipei, Taiwan, says that Blur collapses the boundaries between live performance and virtual reality (VR) to immerse audiences in an experience that is both haunting and personal. 

“With VR, everyone is the center of the experience,” Quintero says. “It’s a very egalitarian medium. … Everyone has the best seat.”

To achieve this personalized quality, the audience for Blur is limited to 10 members at a time. Each viewer wears a VR headset and can view the production in 360 degrees. They can also see, hear, feel, and smell the physical world as they interact with live actors and move through the set. 

When the production is over and the audience members remove their headsets, they often need a bit of time to readjust to reality. “You can see in their eyes that they were somewhere else, and it takes them a moment to come back,” Quintero says. 

For Quintero as an artist, that is the desired response. “It’s about transporting them,” Quintero says. “We’re really trying to create a space for the audience to have their own response based on their own losses, desires, dreams, and fears,” he says. “I think they weren’t just responding to the narrative of the mother and the child. They were responding to something much deeper and much more personal. Ideally, artwork can enable this self-reflection.” 

Blur performances in the coming months include a run at the Tainan Arts Museum in southern Taiwan in December and at the PHI Center in Montreal in February. An exhibition, Future Body: In the Dreamscape, will be held in conjunction with the Blur performances in Taiwan, including artworks by 91���� faculty members Andrew Kaufman, Jeremy Chen, Mirzam Pérez, and Emily Yurkevicz as well as 91���� graduate Bea Crist ’25.

What’s Next?

Quintero loves pushing the boundaries of the medium. Next semester, he will direct a Mainstage production at 91���� titled Variations. For the production, six students will collaborate with an AI to generate their scripts, costume design, and music. “The final product will be a live performance, but as to the trajectory and content of the scripts, it’s still a mystery to me,” he says.

“It’s exciting to embrace the experimental possibilities of the creative process,” Quintero says. 

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