Vulnerable in VR: ‘Uncanny Valley’ and ‘Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis’
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 heart. Uncanny Alley: A New Day rewards vulnerability with a world so alive and textured that even the quietest participant is drawn into its pulse.
By Ferryman Collective and Virtual Worlds Company, the show unfolds inside World Designer Rick Treweek’s sprawling dystopian universe, a neon labyrinth of alleys, surveillance towers, and hidden hacker dens. It’s a landscape that feels heavy with tension and decay. One where defiance bubbles below the surface, ready to burst.
Participants enter by falling directly into a jail cell, detained after rioting against the controlling regime of ALI Corporation. Rescue comes (via the escape portal of the jail cell toilet) with the appearance of Gh0st, a hacker voiced with bright urgency and magnetic warmth by Nicole Eun-Ju Bell. The desperate mission is to escape before the “New Day” update invades the minds of citizens, disconnecting everyone from their memories and hope of autonomy. The stakes are high, and the universe seems epic in scale, but the show never leans on spectacle alone. It leans on connection.
Treweek’s world design, paired with Christopher Lane Davis’ (aka Screaming Colour) animation, FX, music, and sound, creates an environment weighted with history and untold stories. Propaganda screens flicker, data streams pulse. Metallic sounds of tension drift alongside you, creating an undercurrent that ripples with the story’s shifting emotions.
Through this fractured society, the unwavering heart of our guides stands out, carrying astonishing hope. The characters of Gh0st and Atom (James Hyett) primarily lead the journey, lighting an encouraging path forward through the rubble. While these guiding anchor points remain with us throughout, Eun-Ju Bell and Hyett show miraculous speed and dexterity in their abilities to pop up in a whole constellation of personalities. While switching personas faster than it’s possible to track, each one is distinct, alive, and fully inhabited. Hyett’s whirlwind of voicework is an absolute delight that constantly surprises with a vast array of accents, energies, and complex personalities flickering into existence before you’ve even turned your head. Together, their improvisation excels as a keen emotional gauge. They meet whatever energy is presented by the audience on the journey, and respond with precision that manages to be both delicate and powerful.
Each performance becomes uniquely extraordinary because the world shifts depending on who shows up. During the performance I attended, I was accompanied by a group joining from their headsets based in Louisiana. They had seen a Tik Tok tip and followed a rabbit hole trail into this dimension, and I was grateful for their bravery to speak up with full immersion as characters within the world.
We were challenged to be vulnerable when directly asked questions such as, “What is it to feel?” During moments when I remained quiet, it was impressive to feel the sense of camaraderie carry through with strength. I appreciated the way others spoke up, and even if there was silence, the environment thrived with a clear feeling of unified enthusiasm.
I was both amazed and thankful to experience the results of a generous team unit, who made sure no one got left behind. As we flew through portals and swerved through hidden doors and mazes, I appreciated the unique feeling of shared responsibility that the VR atmosphere enabled as we came together, despite great physical distances.
Uncanny Alley: A New Day offers a VR portal into a living act of collective courage. Within this digital city built of code and neon, we feel the resilient power of alignment. Where humans strive to reach each other in new ways, we feel how every brave choice made by our minds and hearts becomes essential.
Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis: Mutualism
Tosca Terán’s Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis: Mutualism let me know I was entering Wonderland almost immediately. Riding on the back of a fuzzy moth, drifting down toward the forest floor, I felt a surge of pure clap-your-hands joy realizing this adventure was about to let us explore the woodland, gifted with the perspective of looking at the world while two inches tall.
This experience hands you a ticket straight into a realm of childlike wonder. But within this rich storyland, we greet the foundations of reality. The show is fact-driven through a scientifically reactive ecosystem shaped in real time by living mycelium and your own EEG signals. To begin the journey, participants must select between two real mushrooms. Appearing in VR versions, and in the Vancouver and Toronto hubs, these mushrooms are linked to bio-sonification modules and electrodes. These sensors are detecting micro-fluctuations in electrical conductivity occurring within the mycelium. This raw data is converted into MIDI Notes and control voltages which generate the live-reactive soundscape and trigger visual effects in VR.
With your chosen mushroom now acting as a collaborator—its living, in‑time data quietly feeding into the dynamic colour and sounds surrounding you—you’re carried into the body of a tiny being.
A towering moth (Marinda Botha) is the first presence to greet you. When she speaks, her voice has an elegant, steady wisdom which sets your purpose: “Find the mycelium entity.” With your mission clear, she sends you out amidst the epic scale of the forest floor. Roots loom overhead and every speck of dirt becomes part of the climb. A shimmering trail pulls the group forward, and the shared delight is instant. My smile widens as I overhear someone letting out an “Oh-hoo shiny!” Looking around at everyone running in circles and letting out their instinctual giggles, it seems like their avatars are practically skipping as they follow the dancing beams of light.
From the brush, an oozing slug (Mandy Canales) emerges with its monstrous height twice your size. This encounter brings sage wisdom, delivered with a deep resonating voice that seems pulled from the earth itself. We are encouraged to seek the golden spore and give it to the beetle, and we fall into a rhythm of gathering. Plunging our hands into growths, pulling out pollen, and following spores that wisp in colourful brush strokes through the air.
In a moment that carries pure Wonderland delight, participants “eat” a spongy looking crumb and absorption of crystals that causes us to swell and grow, giving our two-inch tall perspective a view over the tree-sized mushrooms, and back down again. As we continue down a darkened path, we enter a shadowed meadow where an ancient beetle guardian (Christopher Coles) sits at its edge. Offering him the golden spore feels like participating in a historic ritual with deep significance.
At the experience’s end, a woven launchpad sends you upward into the mycelial network. Here, the project’s scientific backbone becomes visible: participants appear as pulsing chains of colour. This change reflects data currently being read by real-time EEG readings. In this calmed existence where the proof of relaxation is trackable, participants drift through DNA strands and microbial life while fungal conductance shapes the reactive soundscape. It feels like the forest thinking in its own language.
Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis: Mutualism excels at resetting our perspective. By collaborating with living systems, the show allows us to inhabit the forest’s essence. Drifting through imagination and data, we’re carried forward with a renewed appreciation for the microscopic magic that makes existence possible.
‘Uncanny Valley’ and ‘Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis’ played as part of PXR2026 Conference, hosted by Single Thread Theatre Company. More information can be found here.
