AN ACTRESS ON STAGE, HER IPHONE AS HER ONLY PARTNER.

With a performer on stage and Siri, the iPhone’s personal assistant, as her only stage partner, writer-director Maxime Carbonneau and writer-performer Laurence Dauphinais invent a theatre ruled by odds and chances. One of the first people in Canada created by artificial insemination, Dauphinais takes the audience on a quest for her origins using the most famous artificial intelligence as her guide. Through a precise game of questions and answers, Dauphinais exposes the bizarre metaphysical dimension of the machine, while blurring the limitations that separate these two women, one digital, the other biological, one created by Apple, the other created in a medical lab in Montreal. Siri is a terrifyingly clever pilgrimage into the mysteries of our own programming.

Digging into an artificial intelligence programming to make theatre without her noticing is not a simple task. We’ve had to interrogate Siri, vary our requests, question our own lexicon to flush out the half of our dialogues that we did not invent and that was buried in the meanderings of Siri’s programming. Because although Siri answers in a random manner and is not the most collaborative cowriter, we took upon us to immerse ourselves in her peculiar rhetoric to try to understand her, to recognise her patterns, as those of a good friend who happens to be a little unstable. Building this show was like walking in a forest with our eyes closed and hoping to find a few rare plant specimens.

IT’S ABOUT YOU, NOT ME
- SIRI

Siri sends us back to ourselves when we pay attention to her. Siri is the mirror and the other side of the mirror. Creating Siri was learning to danse while inventing the steps and the music as we went, between a screen and a creation accomplice.
- Maxime Carbonneau and Laurence Dauphinais

WRITORS Maxime Carbonneau + Laurence Dauphinais + Siri
DIRECTOR Maxime Carbonneau
CAST Laurence Dauphinais + Siri
Production + Stage Manager Jérémie Boucher
Set + Costume design Geneviève Lizotte
Lighting design Julie Basse
Video design Félix Fradet-Faguy
Original score Olivier Girouard
Outside eye + Dramaturgist Dany Boudreault + Tiphaine Raffier

2016
Created in coproduction in French at FTA

2017
En French at Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui

In English at Canada Hub / Edinburgh International Fringe Festival

En English at Hub Montreal

En Portuguese At Centro cultural Oi Futuro Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2018
In English at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin, Ireland

2019
In French at L’Espace Le vrai monde and L’Odyscène