Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep, Rhubarb Festival @ Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto

ChatGPT version February 16-18 // Installation February 8-18, 2024

What would happen if our ‘waking selves’ and ‘sleeping selves’ met, conversed, and maybe even healed? This digital/analogue performance by sleeptalker Tanya Marquardt tells the story of how they discovered a ‘sleeping self’ named X through their iPhone—an eight year old, cup ½ full little creature walking around in their brain.

Rhubarb is presenting a three-day ChatGPT version, where 50 participants email X a question before they sleep and wake to X’s response. On Feb 18 at 7pm EST, audiences are invited to a gathering of the participants, where we will share stories, reflections, dreams, experiences and images that we encountered during our three-day journey. Coder Ainsley Ellis and composer Omar Zubair perform an improvised sound score based on our live conversation, marking the end of our collective dream explorations.

Book a free ticket for the digital experience here.

Throughout the festival, a free installation in the Buddies Antechamber will offer a live experience, where videos and dream meditations inside textile enclosures invite participants to find their own ‘sleeping selves’.

Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep is conceived and performed by Tanya Marquardt in collaboration with co-curator of the installation and director Fay Nass, composer Omar Zubair, installation designer David B Smith, coding design by Ainsley Ellis, and dramaturgy by Heidi Taylor.

Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep was the subject of an NPR Invisibilia episode titled “True You.”

“The piece started with the fact that I am a sleeptalker. My mother told me I talked in my sleep and when I was a sixteen year old runaway my friends woke up when I talked. Then I downloaded a sound activated recording app on my iPhone and started to record myself at night. That’s when I discovered that I have a sleeping self; an entirely different ‘person’ that rolls around in my head, talks to themself, to me, and to the people sleeping next to me. Then my sleeping self became aware they were being recorded: “Hi, my name is X,” they said, and “I want to see you.” This baffled me. I thought maybe X was trying to heal trauma from my childhood, or that I was speaking to a ghost, receiving proof of our collective dream world. Which freaked me out. And totally intrigued me. “

– Tanya

Contributors throughout the development include Stephen O’Connell, Ellie Heyman, Luke Nickel, Nicolás Noreña, Patty Bella Gone, Masha Tsmiring, Emma Riviera, Barra Mazie-Levy, Daniel Pettrow, DD Kugler, David B Smith, Mel Hague, Abby Wendle, Deidre Barnett and JoAnne Akalaitus.

Beta-Testers include DB Amorin, Jess Barbagallo, Ethan Brown, Derek Chan, Anastasia Clarke, Sabrina Fonseca, Díana Garcia, SJ Norman, Bobbi Sue McCollum, David B Smith, Michael Wheeler, June Fukumura, Elliott Reed, Anais West, Sacha Yanow and Alice Yorke.

Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Earthdance, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, foldA Incubator Residency, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Theatre Replacement, Company 605, PuSh Festival, NPRs Invisibilia, Harvard University, Deirdre Barnett, Mallory Catlett, Ashley Tata, Maiko Bae Yamamoto, the frank theatre, and the Mabou Mines residency program.