Saturday, March 7, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Above: Liza Bielby as the Faery King in Sunset: A Cyber Lament by The Hinterlands (photo by Paul Biundo)
Down into the Digital Otherworld journeys a virtuosic singer in search of his lost soul, which was spirited away by an enchanting and mischievous technological force. This singer – let’s call him Orpheus – travels deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of the Internet as he tries to become whole again – dodging data mining, ring light-eyed wellness gurus, troves of mind-numbing content, and ever-changing terms and conditions. Will he make it out of the digital labyrinth before he forgets his humanity forever?
Inspired by medieval retellings of the Orpheus myth and our collective internet-driven madness, Sunset weaves technologies old and new – mask performance, live video mixing, AI chatbots, electronic music, lamentations, spirit talking, Victorian illusion and more – into a music-driven terrifying and embodied work that mythologizes our relationship with technology, and how it has changed and shaped our imagination. Join The Hinterlands and video artist Renee Willoughby in the Otherworld of ones and zeroes as we wrestle our souls back from the trickster in the black box and break the spell that traps us in the algorithm.
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About Sunset: A Cyber Lament
Sunset: A Cyber Lament is an original performance by The Hinterlands, created by Liza Bielby, Jenna Kirk, Richard Newman, and Renee Willoughby with Jessica Annunziata. With Richard Newman as Orpheus, Liza Bielby as the Fairy King, Renee Willoughby as Persephone, Jessica Annunziata as Hermes, and Jenna Kirk as the Medium. Directed by Richard Newman. Scenic design by Jenna Kirk. Sound design by Richard Newman. Video design and live video mixing by Renee Willoughby. Magical dramaturgy by Matt Cosper. Sunset: A Cyber Lament was produced with support by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and with a DEEP Space Residency in May 2025 at North American Cultural Laboratory.
About The Hinterlands
The Hinterlands (Detroit/Waawiyaataanong) creates performances and events pressing into the unknown areas of our personal and collective history with fearless physicality and a sense of humor. We engage in an ongoing ecstatic physical and vocal training practice that is the foundation of our collaborative devising process, and a means of conducting exchanges across disciplines. Through our daily, ongoing research into the body, the voice, and the lineages that shape us, and through sharing these practices with the public, we seek to transform ourselves, to uncover just and equitable ways of being in community with one another, and to shepherd the futures of our collective wildest imaginings into practice. Since our founding in 2009, we have created eight full-length theatrical works and dozens of public projects, from intimate participatory “utopian dinners” at flea markets, to live-streamed take-out competitions between neighborhood restaurants, to fictional radical archives that explode into the poetic, to works of multi-national grassroots theatrical diplomacy. Our work has been seen at Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai, China), The John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), The Flynn Center (Burlington, VT), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, MI), the Berlinale (Berlin, Germany), Co-Prosperity Sphere (Chicago, IL), Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA), Alverno Presents (Milwaukee, WI), Teatri Dodona (Pristina, Kosovo), P! (NYC), and White Night (Chengdu, China), among other locales large and small. thehinterlands.org
