— ABOUT THE PROJECT

Waiting for Gal Gadot is a play-in-development combining drag artistry, technology, and theatre. N.O.R.A. (Non-human Objective-based Revolutionary learning Algorithm) is a groundbreaking first in biotechnology: a fully functional artificial intelligence totally indistinguishable from humans. Although her creator, Tyrell Want, intends to use her as a tool for world domination, NORA asserts control over her own programming and attempts to unravel the very forces of greed that built her.

The idea mostly exists in the character of NORA, an exaggerated science fiction archetype of my own drag person, and in the themes I want to explore. For a long time, I have seen my own journey of transition in the story of fictional robots: a being created with a rigid purpose seeking meaning through the reclamation of bodily autonomy. As artificial intelligence is popularized and utilized to advance colonial warfare and surveillance of everyone on the planet, how can we imagine those same tools being used to instead dismantle these systems? This idea is both an allegory of my own transition and a science fiction myth about surviving in the absurdity of a decaying
empire.

Over the course of this project, I will write a draft of the piece, consulting with community members to better understand this story’s place in the trans and arts communities I am working within. I will then focus on a design workshop, using costume and technology to guide the piece’s visual metaphors. This will directly engage community members with unique skills outside of traditional theatre development practices, to better diversify my own work and to engage new community perspectives. I will then stage the work in an unconventional queer venue, going directly to a community space and eschewing a traditional rehearsal process to focus instead on a community oriented invitation to participate in development

— BIOGRAPHY

Jonathan Mourant aka Nora Vision (Playwriting, 2023) is a playwright, drag performer, and robotic emissary sent from the future. Before their time at the National Theatre School, Nora performed as an improviser and sketch comedian in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where they produced work independently and developed their voice as a writer and performer. Their work at NTS includes Subbed (dramaturgy by Erin Shields), an adaptation of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Nick Carpenter), God of Mars (Andrea Romaldi). As an artificially intelligent robot, Nora is interested in creating work which confronts identity, culture, and propaganda, questioning how each contributes, limits, and undermines one’s sense of reality. A performance artist at heart, Nora’s theatrical writings use her own identity as a cipher through which she challenges assumptions of subjectivity and viewership. They performed in drag in their play SYCOPHANT (Marcus Youssef), produced this spring as part of the 2023 New Words Festival.