Single Thread Theatre Co — Kingston Theatre Alliance

On the final evening of PXR2026 Conference, people gathered into a Virtual Reality (VR) world where rolling hills were lit by moonlight. We made our way over to sit on a hillside that sloped toward a pond, where a projection screen glowed from across the water.  Throughout the festival, VR had revealed itself not as an escape hatch but as a medium of attunement. Participants shrank to two inches tall, […]

The following review details two shows as part of PXR2026 Conference. Uncanny Alley: A New Day VR asks for a layered kind of courage. I had assumed the hardest part would be the technical unfamiliarity, but the real bravery comes when you step from your quiet room into a space full of life. This creates the opportunity to arrive exactly as you are in that moment, stepping forward with genuine […]

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 […]

Virtual Reality has been on the rise as a new medium in the theatre industry for a few years now, but is it ready to take the forefront? Last weekend I had the honour of attending the 2024 PXR Conference for the second year running. This time around, I attended Journey to Octopulis: Improv or Die, hosted by Unknown Theater, and Mary Shelley Lives Here, hosted by Hummingbird Interactive. Both […]

At PXR 2024, performance meets expansive realities across physical and digital spaces. Established in 2020, the PXR (Performance and XR) Conference is Canada’s first and only conference on XR (Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality) performance creation. PXR 2024, hosted by Single Thread Theatre Company, takes place in-person in Kingston, Toronto, and Vancouver, as well as virtually, from Friday, November 8th to Sunday, November 17th—local Kingston events are in partnership with […]

Think of a world where anything is possible; where imagination comes to life. Welcome to Virtual Reality. Single Thread and Electric Company Theatre’s PXR Conference is full of exceptional talks and presentations about Virtual Reality (VR) and exploring the power of VR for immersive and interactive experiences. In my previous article, I discussed my findings attending these presentations and now will touch on some of the PXR experience events I […]

Virtual reality is a relatively unexplored area of technology that can take you to worlds beyond your imagination. This past week I have had the pleasure of attending the PXR Conference run by Single Thread Theatre Company and Electric Company Theatre. It is a ten-day hybrid conference that showcases the best of Virtual Reality (VR) and how it can be used as a tool for interactive experiences. The conference begins […]

Performance and XR (PXR) is a virtual reality conference hosted by Kingston’s Single Thread Theatre Company and Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre. Spanning provinces and platforms, the conference celebrates digital art making and innovation through XR (extended reality—virtual, augmented, and mixed reality). This week, I’m meeting with Amanda Lin—PXR producer and former editor of the KTA  blog—to learn more about the conference.  This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  […]

Like many, the idea of an online theatrical experience doesn’t excite me like it did pre-pandemic.  The anticipation of being involved with new technology has been dimmed by having to creatively engage with it out of necessity rather than curiosity for the last two years. This was the unfortunate attitude that I held when I went into the PXR (Performance and Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality) Conference. Immediately I felt […]

Project Description: SWIRLS: a series of workshops held around Kingston as a collaborative setting for meaningful engagement to improve artists’ digital literacy and enhance their capabilities in using AR/VR as an art form. In-person and virtual workshops will bring together a wide array of artists working within different artistic disciplines. The workshops will be experiments in providing learning opportunities while creating a context that makes for creative sparks to happen. […]

[TLDR is an abbreviation for ‘too long; didn’t read’, usually followed by a brief synopsis] If the pandemic has taught us anything in the last year and a half, it has been how to adapt. While an inability to gather has seen the closing of countless theatres, some companies have turned to the internet as a means of staying afloat. By broadcasting performances and moving programming online, digitizing became a […]

In a moment where Zoom meetings, doom-scrolling, and our digital worlds seem repetitive as ever, Single Thread Theatre Company’s production of Collider presents a profoundly innovative way to bring digital theatre to Canadian audiences.