PXR 2026: Opening Weekend
Presence acts as the sustaining heartbeat to live theatre. In our lifetime, where the digital age brings distancing and screen barriers, I think we are all contemplating the multidimensional angles of presence. It’s easy to refer to it on the surface layer—‘just show up’—but as our experience of ‘just showing up’ becomes increasingly challenging, the need for presence becomes increasingly desperate. As someone who often feels apprehensive about the weight of being present, it was refreshing to greet new thoughts that were encouraged through the opening events of PXR2026, hosted by Single Thread Theatre Company.
To initiate the first step of being present, it requires us to make a clear choice. To ‘show up,’ we choose to cross a threshold. The doorways leading to connection come in many forms, what matters is we choose to bring ourselves into that shared space. As I encounter Virtual Reality (VR) for the first time, I begin to understand the doorway could appear as a glowing portal lit up before your eyes while your head is contained within the hefty mask of a headset.
I first stepped into the VR world alone at home. It felt glaringly bright, loud, and dizzying. The day after my solo VR trial, I walked up to Kingston’s Tett Centre with my usual nervous fear of not belonging. However, on Friday, my very first step into PXR’s opening night at Modern Fuel began instantly with warmth and encouragement.
Stepping into the Kingston Hub felt like a reunion I sincerely needed. While chatting in-person with friendly faces I hadn’t seen in ages, projected screens extended our company—showing the Toronto and Vancouver hubs, and the VR world itself, avatars drifting, gathering, waving. As speeches began from the PXR team, three versions of presence layered together in a living collage.
The acknowledgement of the land and space grounding our feet invited us to connect to the complex history and fragile future, reminding us that even digital spaces have weight—cultural, relational, ethical. We weren’t just logging on, but stepping into a shared responsibility.
Choosing to go through a portal, literal or metaphorical, is choosing connection over drift. It’s choosing to be seen, even a little. In a world where social media gives us the illusion of closeness while quietly leaving us immobile and scrolling alone, VR offers a strangely honest alternative: you must actually show up.
As the evening unfolded, the room revealed one of those delightful glitches that only happens when physical and virtual worlds overlap. Our Kingston Hub had fallen into a quiet lull when suddenly a floating voice drifted through the speakers. Not from anyone in the room, not from any visible avatar, but from some mystery microphone in some other Hub.
The voice was casually debating takeaway food options.
It brought smiles of connection across the room, a gentle reminder of the strange intimacy of these hybrid spaces. Somewhere, someone was standing near a mic, unaware their dinner decisions were echoing across cities. I appreciated it as an endearing link, a tiny accidental window into someone else’s evening, because this precise situation had been my biggest fear during my solo VR trials. The terror that my confused muttering and vague panic noises were being broadcast into the void. The fear that I was unintentionally monologuing to strangers while trying not to walk into a wall.
But hearing that floating voice reminded me the process of presence includes the wonderful messiness of moments on the sidelines. No matter where we are and what we’re bringing, we’re all just humans navigating overlapping rooms, occasionally leaking a bit of ourselves into the wrong one.
Accidents are so often richly welcomed.
It’s what makes the space feel more alive.
Opening Night held space for three artist‑led experiences, each offering a different doorway into the shared imagination of PXR. Ove Holmqvist’s Triadic Mutualism linked the three Hubs through a kaleidoscopic ring of shifting lines that responded to our footsteps, weaving distantly-made movements into a single, interlaced musical improvisation—a way to feel your presence ripple outward and be registered across cities. Sarah Hin Ching U’s Us Beneath the Currents invited us into an augmented‑reality exploration of human adaptability, layering real‑time full‑body tracking with drifting digital designs. The night closed in a joyful dance party with the VRChat DJ Dance Party, where OkGold’s music and Swiftp’s visuals transformed the surrounding world as avatars danced in their own unique ways.
On Saturday, I reentered the conference through the VR headset in my own space. While standing alone in the real world, I “joined the instance” and arrived in the midst of a bustling waterside gathering.
Liam Karry and Catie Thorne welcomed us into the PXR2026 story‑world as travelers finally reaching shore after being adrift at sea. As “Clockworks,” we landed at Pier 21, a mysterious, desolate dock where a chittering blue figure named Dock Boy and a friendly giant‑headed wizard helped us ashore. At the dock, we gathered around the firelight for a grounding moment before continuing through “processing.”
Each person appeared as a unique avatar—bold, brightly coloured, endearingly awkward. The digital stumbles and hesitant gestures created a shared softness, a sense that everyone was allowed to be a little strange. When my confused, floaty-green-fox-ghost popped up on the dock, the PXR team welcomed me instantly and guided me through a rope‑lined queue presided over by the kindly wizard.
Inside, colourful shapes hovered above our seats as a giant‑cat version of Adrienne Wong opened her keynote address with honesty. She noted her own hesitations in VR—the confusion, the motion sickness, the disorientation — and admitted she had questioned whether she was the right person to lead us. But as she grounded herself in her real‑world stance—feet steady, water ready—it became clear how deeply her voice was valued for its understanding of belonging and what it takes to remove barriers to true community.
Her message guided us through the history of FoldA (Festival of Live Digital Art) and the ongoing care required to make gatherings accessible across dimensions. She described community as the essential groundwork for radical change: trust built in layers, curiosity needing safety, exploration needing joy. And everyone—even a green ghost sitting on the floor in the corner—belongs here.
After a moment of reflection, the PXR team extended the keynote’s ideas into lived experience. Though our feet were planted in different parts of the world, our minds aligned inside a carefully curated world of play. As a group, we faced an imposing locked gate. The only way forward was together: crashing through a side wall, leaping over logs, and discovering a new route to open the entrance from behind.
We opened the gate from behind and collected lanterns to lead us into PXR2026.
Connection isn’t theoretical.
It’s something you build with thoughtfully considered presence—even in a virtual body.
The weekend unfolded with every event connected in the flowing arc of the PXR story‑world. Nothing felt isolated; each experience carried us forward, deepening the sense of camaraderie among attendees and grounding us in a shared purpose. What we learned in one room echoed into the next, creating a journey rather than a schedule.
In Arc of Harmony, Christopher Lane Davis led us into an underground where interactive architecture echoed our movements. Forest Wild XR, created by Juliana Loh and collaborators, carried us into a shifting forest where real‑world dancers were translated into living brushstrokes across a shared canvas. And in Everything Under the Dome, Tara Morris guided us into a quiet, contemplative chamber—part cocoon, part communal nest—inviting us to consider how digital spaces might build unique structures, not of escape, but instead offer our minds the space to convene in reflection.
Across all these opening‑weekend events, I could feel my capacity for presence shifting—what began as a bizarre, dizzying wonderland was able to flow towards finding pockets of presence.
As someone who often feels the distance of screens as a barrier, this adventure felt closer to stepping through the glass itself. What began with unfamiliar fear found its way towards opportunity for new, honest nearness. A looking‑glass adventure where the digital didn’t replace reality, but refracted it. With bold avatar personalities helping us find our presence, we find new angles to see one another, and new ways to show up as we are.
The PXR Conference, hosted by Single Thread Theatre Company, celebrates the evolution of live performance in virtual, augmented, and mixed realities. It runs from February 20 – March 1st, 2026. More information can be found here.
