He could survive the frozen vacuum of interstellar space. Temperatures hot enough to shrivel a scorpion would not faze him. Years without food? No problem. And yet this literally superhuman creature is probably plagued by self-doubt and existential despair.

He is Gary 3: part man, part tardigrade. And he is also the protagonist of Amy Lee Lavoie’s new play, Genetic Drift, a Pi Theatre production being presented as part of Boca del Lupo’s ever-provocative Micro Performance Series.

It’s 150 years in the future. Global warming is now more than an inconvenient truth or an undeniable fact: it’s a mortal threat. And the surviving members of the one percent are desperate to ensure that their genes, at least, will survive, no matter the cost.

Director Richard Wolfe came up with the basic idea, but when he handed writing duties to Lavoie, she knew exactly where to go.

“For any writer, being able to create 150 years of history is a daunting task, but really exciting,” she says, in a telephone interview from her West End home. “So as soon as he pitched it to me, my focus became ‘I’ve got to absorb all the news reports that I can.’ At first I watched a lot of documentaries—and SNL [Saturday Night Live], which is my best news source right now. I was really open to a lot of conversations with people—their fears about the end of the world, and the future, and what we’re doing. There was also an article about human-pig embryos, so there were all these gifts that were being given to me, and I just kind of shaped a world based on my assumptions about what would happen.”

Pigs, of course, would be no more likely to survive the coming inferno than their bacon-eating, two-legged counterparts. So Lavoie seized on the idea of splicing human genes with those of a seemingly unkillable and unfathomably cute microorganism.

“Whether or not that totally comes through is still to be determined,” the playwright cautions, noting that actor Tom Jones’s costume is still in the design process. “But the tardigrade is certainly the visual inspiration for Gary 3. I just think they’re incredible. Anything called a waterbear…”

She trails off, laughing, before delving deeper into the psyche of this one-man show’s protagonist. “I think he’s much more human than animal.…I don’t know how much I can give away, but I think the animal elements are sort of physical manifestations, things to help him through what’s going on in the world. But he’s totally conscious, really fighting, and very much a human.”

Lavoie is also loath to give away how she and Wolfe plan to work their audience into Genetic Drift’s script, but allows that immersive design and a tiny Granville Island theatre will ensure that viewers feel part of the action.

“They’ll certainly be held accountable for what’s happening,” she says. “But hopefully, they’ll be able to take it with a laugh—and feel compelled to learn something, too.”

Pi Theatre and Boca del Lupo present Genetic Drift at the Fishbowl on Granville Island from next Wednesday to Saturday (April 5 to 8).