Boîte noire

Show Theatre Dystopian thriller
Dates

January 20 to February 21, 2026

23 performances

“What’s your wildest dream? Reaching the pinnacle of success in your field? Getting in fantastic shape? Overcoming your addiction to food or your phone? Think about it for a few seconds… Can you see the dream? It’s right there, within reach... Are you ready to make it come true?” says the founder of Essor, Quebecer Éliza Williams.

The box, her revolutionary invention developed in Silicon Valley, allows people to overcome their conditioning, the relic of past trauma, and to “hack” their life. It’s a big day. But in this not-too-distant future, there are 30,000 people at the border in one of the many North American refugee camps run by private corporations, and they too are dreaming of a better existence. Among them are Andrés, Tendaji and Laïla, who spend ten hours a day processing thousands of pieces of data to train the algorithms for this supposedly intelligent box. Predictably, not everyone will come out a winner in this race to create high-performance humans.

Since La meute, audiences have been eagerly awaiting Catherine-Anne Toupin’s new work, the product of her writing residency with Duceppe. She delivers a bold, captivating dystopian thriller: “When reality is stranger than fiction, dystopia seems the best way to talk about current events.” Boîte noire addresses a number of front-burner issues: the fantasy of self-optimization, the dehumanization and narcissism engendered by technology, increasing social inequality and the global challenge of immigration. With its hypnotic stagecraft, this heart-stopping show borrows codes from sci-fi film to create a spellbinding experience. An incredibly ambitious piece of theatre, Boîte noire is a unique offering on Quebec’s theatrical landscape.

  • Language French
  • Text

    Catherine-Anne Toupin

    Stage direction

    Justin Laramée

    Interpretation

    Lamia Benhacine, Frédéric Blanchette, Vincent-Guillaume Otis, Madeleine Sarr, Catherine-Anne Toupin, Victor Andres Trelles Turgeon, Aimé Tuyishime and another actor

    Staging Assistance

    Marie-Hélène Dufort

    Scenography

    Odile Gamache

    Costumes

    Cynthia St-Gelais

    Lighting

    Julie Basse

    Music

    Alex McMahon

  • Production / Presentation

    Duceppe

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