User Not Found: (Modern Plays)

It’s the moment of your death.

There’s a magic button.

Do you delete your entire online legacy?

Or do you keep it – and leave the choice for someone else? 

USER NOT FOUND is about our digital lives after we die. Dante or Die's play, created with pioneering theatre-artist Chris Goode, is inspired by a Guardian article by Caroline Twigg about dealing with her late husband’s digital afterlife. In the play Terry becomes responsible for the online legacy of his partner - he is flooded with condolence texts and messages about his partner's death, and then has to decide what to keep and what to delete. 

The performance was originally developed with creative technologists Marmelo, and was performed in a café, where the audience share Terry's story through smartphones and headphones. In this format the play was performed in cafés across the country, including at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe.   

The audience become a fly-on-the-wall to peer into the life of a man who is faced with keeping or deleting. A story of contemporary grief unfolds through this intimate, funny performance that gently interrogates our need for connection. "With his tender script, [Goode] hands us each the weight of the internet and asks how we get closure in a world where nothing ever switches off." The Guardian.

Dante or Die make bold and ambitious site-based performances that tour across the country. They transform ordinary spaces to create unique and intimate experiences. Led by co-founders Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan, they work to interrogate and celebrate the human condition through the exploration of contemporary social concerns.

Chris Goode is a writer, director, performer and sound designer. His credits include The Forest & The Field at Ovalhouse, Monkey Bars at the Traverse and Unicorn Theatres and 9 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Other credits include two Fringe First award-winning shows: Neutrino (with Unlimited Theatre: Soho Theatre, London, and international tour), and his own solo debut Kiss of Life (Pleasance, Edinburgh; Drill Hall, London), which travelled to Sydney Opera House as part of the Sydney International Festival. He won the Headlong/Gate New Directions Award for his production …Sisters at the Gate Theatre. He was also part of the international touring cast of Tim Crouch’s The Author, which first opened at the Royal Court Theatre.