The Cascadian Institute of Cultural Design presents the world premiere of Monsterkill 5: Remonsterkilled (Or, We Were the Empty Set), a play about life and death and life and death in a whack-em-up videogame.

Set in a world called Scapescape, Monsterkill 5 follows five virtual avatars as they struggle to overcome both their compulsion to constantly bludgeon each other and the machinations of the game designer who eggs them on. The play is an uncomfortably funny, slapstick treatise on the movement of violence from outer life to inner life and vice-versa. Most of all, it’s an absurdist takeoff of the traditional videogame format that sees characters die over and over again only to be reincarnated once more with the singular drive to wreak havoc.

Starring:

Charlie Cook as 'Blue'
Abbey St. Brendan as 'Ultramon/Intercom'
Marissa Raylene Burton as 'SuperDisciple'
AJ Birtwistle as Sneakysneaky12
Tim Kozody as Hacksassin
Riaan Smit as Peon

The Institute is a Vancouver-based performing arts company with the (ever so slightly facetious) mandate of “keeping you safe and engaged through the institutionalization of contemporary art.” The Institute sends up the educational rhetoric surrounding today’s artworks, targeting its punk-inflected satire at audiences of B-list movies, TV-shows and, of course, videogames. Thinking of staying in and watching Netflix? The Institute has a better itinerary for you.