Theater Mitu: Utopian Hotline

Is anyone out there? is anyone listening? Are we alone? In 1977, NASA launched the twin Voyager spacecrafts to try and answer these questions. Aboard both is The Golden Record, an artifact intended to communicate who and what we are. After 43 years and over 13 billion miles, this proverbial message in a bottle is the farthest human-made object from Earth.

If we were to send another message into the distant future, what message would we send?

To answer this, Theater Mitu created a public telephone hotline (646-694-8050) prompting people to leave messages to the future. These voicemails along with messages from astronauts, astronomers, futurists, spiritual communities, and middle school students make up the source material for Utopian Hotline.

As we re-emerge from this unprecedented year, Utopian Hotline creates a moment of community. Audiences of 12 will gather, not in the darkness of a traditional theater, but underneath a 30ft video installation, on a pink carpet, around a communal table, to re-imagine our shared future. Performers, tethered to audience members by headphones, will musicalize and transmit these collected messages. Together, they will acknowledge coming into community as a radical action. An action that has consistently shaped this planet’s future. An action that reaffirms that someone is listening, that we are, in fact, not alone.

Created by Theater Mitu and directed by Rubén Polendo, this work was developed in partnership with SETI Institute, Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative, and Brooklyn Independent Middle School.

Ticket purchase required.

See Theater Mitu's website for performance expectations and COVID 19 safety protocols: https://theatermitu.org/works/utopias/ 

BUY TICKETS