SUB-CON WARRIOR 2.0 EDUCATION PACK STILL AVAILABLE!

The sold out season of Sub-Con Warrior 2.0 closed on May 3. Thanks to all the amazing actors and creative team who worked so hard to realise this vision of taking the audience through an interactive cyber-game of the future. Photos and video materials available in the Gallery.

Thanks to our sponsors and partners

AUSTRALIA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS and ARTS QUEENSLAND for your generous support; VISY DESIGNER PACKAGING for helping us create the environments of the Sub-Con; and PINNACLE SPORTS who made sure we flew rather than fell as we reached for the extraordinary.

Sub-Con Warrior 2.0 - reviewed!

by Baz McAlister - Time Off Magazine - Wed April 20^th-May 6^th 2008 Issue 1371

You could certainly never accuse Brisbane's Zen Zen Zo of being boring. I mean, how many theatrical productions have you been to where there's a level of audience participation that requires you to form ranks and pelt zombies with missile weapons? But that's exactly how it went down in Sub-Con Warrior 2.0. Right from the start, when you're asked to choose a codename, take a mask and lie flat and blind inside a shaft of light in the vast, dark bowels of the Judith Wright Centre - well, you're inside Zen Zen Zo's world. Of course, by the end of the production, you'll leave it again, however reluctantly.

The production follows on from 2006's Sub-Con Warrior 1.0, and very appropriately this version could be considered an upgrade. It's bigger, darker, deeper and let's just say the ending might not be what you'd expect. The 80-strong audience, playing the role of real-world n00bs in this virtual world of the Sub-Con, are inside a game with four Warriors - monk Mantra, cyber-chick Mercury, lighting-throwing Shockwave, and tough merc Hunter - when everything goes wrong, and hacker Alice breaks through to tell the ugly truth about the cheerfully amoral Corporation behind it all. Banding together into four groups behind one of the warriors, the audience are guided through every corridor of the Judy (and onto Berwick Street at one point) with surprises around each turn.

The result really has to be experienced; writing about it can't adequately convey the fervour of yelling support to your totem Warrior, or describe the visceral thrills, nervous laughter and spikes of real fear you'll feel when running from a guy with a chainsaw or edging towards a big box you know contains a zombie. All that, and there's a sting in the tale, a deliciously dark moral about human nature's darker side. A triumph where everything combines - lighting, video, music, fight scenes, acting - to make an incredibly effective whole.

SUB-CON WARRIOR 2.0 EDUCATION PACK NOW AVAILABLE!

Click here to download Sub-Con Ed Pack.

Critical Responses to SubCon Warrior 1:

"A dance between celebrating and critiquing computer game culture. The challenge of representing computer games in the 'real' world has been met with a production that takes the concept of immersion literally. Zen Zen Zo has created a show oozing with enthusiasm and excitement, and created much anticipation for the restaging."

"With immense energy and conviction, Zen Zen Zo build this sort of hyper-reality, seducing the audience into surrendering to it. And we did... A multi-site specific work where boredom is not an option."

"Sexy, scary, daring, fun and edgy and uses space in highly innovative and stimulating ways."