Intrapology posts

I/we Need Queer Disabled Online Art (2026 update)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 15:34:09 +0100

This was originally posted on our Patreon on January 22nd 2024. I’ve added some updated references in this repost, as well as audio narration. Image is ‘Layered principles, values and activities for creative, anti-oppressive and trauma aware practice’ collage from Sunderland et al. 2023

Content warning: mentions of medical gaslighting and suicidality

“Whatever being trans is about, it’s decidedly characterized by upheaval and emergence into a social world with shifting and shifted parameters. For many of us, surviving this process means committing to forms of healing that are unthinkable, indeed impossible, without care webs.”- Hil Malatino, Trans Care (access on Desperate Livin)

Among other things, Intrapology is a way of processing rage and a sense of abandonment as a queer disabled person. Everyone I Know Is Sick and we don’t know why. Why are almost all my queer friends chronically ill? Why are there so few doctors who understand our health needs? Why is the whole world acting like there’s no need to protect us from infection risks, despite the clear evidence that 10% of COVID infections results in long-term illness? (Edit: this figure now seems too low. A study in Japan published in 2026 found that 23% of infections led to long-term symptoms. A 2025 meta-analysis found the global prevalence of long COVID to be 36%) Shouldn’t we all be freaking out?

In 2021 an editorial in The Lancet recognised that “Many aspects of LGBTQI health and their determinants are woefully understudied” and that the majority of research in this area focuses on HIV and considers inequalities only from the perspective of risk behaviours. My lived experience both online and IRL tells me that there is a large intersection between LGBTQ+ identity, neurodiversity, and disability, but I struggle to find formal evidence to support this claim and communicate it to others. However, I do see evidence to support the following elements of it:

Trans people are more likely to be autistic, ADHD, etc., and the reverse is also true.
Neurodivergent people have unique health needs, and are more likely to acquire other disabling conditions.
Trans people experience minority stress that may increase susceptibility to acquired health issues, and face unequal treatment in the health sector. Trans people are considerably more likely to report that they do not feel listened to by doctors.
Some of the health issues that we tend to acquire make us more vulnerable to infections, and therefore more vulnerable to acquiring yet more chronic illnesses i.e. post-viral sequelae such as ME/CFS.
All of this is before even beginning to address the trauma held by the community due to the AIDS crisis, as well as high rates of medical trauma due to the power dynamics of transition-related care.

My lived experience also tells me that those of us who occupy these intersections have been let down by society in many ways, particularly after the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. This affects us in our workplaces, community spaces, and it shapes how we connect with arts and culture. A high % of disabled people do not access arts and culture as much as they would like - according to the National Disability Survey 2021, 47% of disabled people and 56% of carers. The UK Disability Arts Alliance 2021 Survey showed that almost two thirds of disabled CAH workers surveyed were worried they would have to leave the creative sector. 82% expressed concern about the continued provision of access for disabled audiences through reopening.

Our current situation demands a kind of art practice that centres mutual nourishing and collective flourishing. Poteat et al. in The Lancet call for more research not only into minority stress, but also into how LGBTQ+ people “cope and thrive” including “identity formation, access to social support, adaptive coping strategies, family formation, and healthy ageing”.

The experiences of the AIDS crisis and COVID-19 have demonstrated the ways that pandemics are socially and culturally embedded, forcing us to process intense uncertainty, inequity, and constantly evolving (mis)information. A 2019 report of the Canadian Standing Committee on Health on the health of 2SLGBTQIA people found that in general, we are more likely “to develop mental health disorders, have suicidal thoughts and attempt suicide” and that minority stress may “contribute to earlier onset of chronic diseases” in this community.

“anti-oppressive and trauma-aware creative arts practice can communicate complex information in a way that not only prioritises cultural and communication diversity, but also trauma-informed principles of nervous system regulation and cultural safety” - Sunderland et al. 2023

I feel drawn to make work that serves those of us at these intersections, and that addresses the need for a flourishing online arts and culture sector. It was briefly possible for us to access more arts and culture when events moved online during lockdown. The rush to return to normal has in some ways felt like an evacuation of the online sphere. This has been all the more disheartening because it is happening at the same time as a bunch of other profoundly depressing technoculture trends, such as so-called “AI” applications of large datasets that use other people’s work without consent and take a couple orders of magnitude more energy to complete than existing workflows.

Social media has been beneficial in many ways, but it also suffers from algorithmic bias, overwhelming commercialisation, and a transactional relationship with audiences. (Edit: I would now specify that corporate social media has these qualities. Community-owned alternatives such as the Fediverse do not have these problems.) This is demonstrated in everyday behaviours and comunication: advocates for marginalised communities are censoring their own use of language in order to avoid having their content suppressed by algorithms, and then finding that once in a while those same algorithms promote their work too far and put them in direct reach of people who are hostile towards them.

We cannot rely on recommendation algorithms to elevate work that challenges prevailing ways of seeing and being. This is part of why so many communities have moved into private spaces such as Discords and, indeed, Patreons. I am keen to hear about any structures that have emerged to connect these private communities, so that we can find one another.

Update Summer 2026

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:38:02 +0100

It’s been quiet here since December when we carried out a performance with TALOS Festival in London. Attendance was poor and delivering the show cost around 10 times more than we made in ticket sales. (Edit: what am I saying? It’s much more than that - closer to 100x) However, we had the honour of seeing a TERF storm off in a huff as soon as trans rights were mentioned, which is a priceless memory.

Past

It’s hard to look back at Season One without loaded emotions, but the thing that hits me is how incredibly resourceful and resilient creatives need to be when they’re bringing a vision to life. Intrapology was the biggest, most personal project I’ve ever done. It lived inside me; its pain was my pain, its joys were my delight. There’s no way to hold any of that at arm’s length.

I won’t pretend that it all turned out as I’d hoped, but I’m proud that I pulled together an incredibly diverse and talented team of more than 40 freelancers - much bigger than many small businesses - with some individuals performing more than one role and everyone adapting their skills to this project. It took a lot to manage the project day to day with a bunch of actors, directors, technicians, software developers and testers, consultants and specialists.

I’m proud that we pulled out all the stops to create an online, interactive world for and with people who find it hard to access physical theatre spaces and don’t see themselves at the centre of traditional storylines. Our core team learned something new with each episode and by Episode 4 we began to see the plan coming together. The writing was stronger, the actors had settled into their roles, the director was making magic, the technicians were stellar. Then we ran out of money.

There should be a few more ‘Rs’ alongside resourcefulness and resilience. Rest, recover, and re-evaluate. Reach out and in for care and support because it’s hard out there and, for those of us with disabilities, it is hard to ask our bodies to carry even more pain. Creatives take risks which means they accelerate towards setbacks, celebrate tiny triumphs, and do lots of invisible work that audience members never see. It’s important to resist simplistic notions of success and failure and remember all of that work, because it takes a hell of a lot of courage to put yourself and your new-born baby on the line.

Present

None of my many funding applications in 2025 were successful, except for the Children’s Capital of Culture traineeship which came to an end in March. Even during the period when we had funding, I had to spend around half of my time writing unsuccessful applications, another large portion trying in vain to reach audiences, plus admin for our existing grants, leaving only a small sliver of time for actual creative output. Basically, it doesn’t make sense for a disabled person with only 25 working hours a week to be responsible for creative direction, producing, fundraising, PR, and community management all at the same time!

On top of that, burnout and long COVID have been aggravating my MS, leaving me very unwell since December. For several weeks I was almost bedbound. The devastating psychological impact of near-constant rejection from both funders and audiences, especially for a project as ambitious and as personal as this one, hasn’t helped. I therefore had to stop for the sake of my mental and physical health.

That means not making and publishing new work until at least next year. When I do start making new work, it’s likely to be much smaller in scale. Whatever productive capacity I recover will be spent making things, not begging strangers to care about the things I’ve made. More than ever, I want to tell stories about how it feels when you sit alone facing the void where society was supposed to be, and what we could build together if only we could reach one another.

Future

Thankfully, my energy is starting to return, and I’m starting to think about how I might move forward with Intrapology. My first priority has been to cut our digital platforms back to reduce costs and focus on the things that make me happy to be on the internet. I’ve closed our ghost.io members site and ported the content to a micro.blog; I intend to close our Patreon as well, after republishing the more interesting content onto our micro.blog. If you were a supporter on either of these platforms, you will receive an invitation to subscribe to our micro.blog mailing list.

I’m unlikely to go back to posting on the Intrapology Instagram and Tiktok accounts because surveillance capitalism doesn’t make me happy and it has never helped us reach audiences. I’m keeping our Neocities site, our Peertube instance, and our Fedwiki, because those things are joyous expressions of the collective creative potential of the internet, without content recommendation algorithms that gatekeep our access to audiences. I’d return to corporate social media if I got the budget to pay someone to do it efficiently and strategically, but this is unlikely to happen.

In the meantime, work we created when we had funding still needs to be published. This includes the recording of Episode 4 which was edited by our Children’s Capital of Culture trainee, Lucia Pires-Reeves, and the interactive playscripts of Episode 4 and Episode 5. I also hope to publish some blog posts discussing the strengths of the work we did in Season One to make a public record of the possibilities we explored for online interactive work that centres queer and disabled folks. I hope other people can try to realise these possibilities in their own projects, and I hope they receive more support than we have.

Thanks

I’d like to thank our funders - Arts Council England, Creative Catalyst, and Innovate UK – and everyone who took part as collaborators and audience members. We lost very few team members on our journey, and many gave so much at difficult times in their lives. As creatives we learn to hold pain as lovingly as we hold joy. It doesn’t destroy our truths, it is produced in service of our truths and resides with them inside our bodies. It hurts and with self-flagellation it hurts even more. By practising compassion it can become one of those cracks that lets the light in so that we can see our way to our next creative adventure. The point is to stay with those truths because that’s the only way to do the work that matters and collectively build worlds we can all live in.

Updates on all of this will be on post.intrapology.com so please do follow that via RSS or email.

All the best,

Zoyander

Online tickets now live for HYBRID performance at Bread and Roses Theatre

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:29:42 +0100

Are you in London? Do you know a queer nerd in London? Please let them know about our forthcoming shows on 11th and 12th December!

For the Intrapology community outside of that there London, tickets are now live for the online version of the performance - it'll work much like our usual shows, but Xander will be joining from the stage at Bread and Roses Theatre!

Tickets site

Registering to participate online helps support us, as this show is pretty much guaranteed to run at a loss. The cost of travel and accommodation alone will outweigh even the maximum amount we can make from in-person ticket sales. In theory, a show like this could break even thanks to its hybrid nature, because the internet is a big place!

TALOS V Science Fiction Theatre Festival - Assigned Earth at Birth

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 15:04:58 +0100

We're bringing a hybrid performance of the first episode of our show, Assigned Earth at Birth, to London for two dates in December.

Thursday 11 December, 7.30pm

Friday 12 December, 5.30pm

We're part of a fantastic line-up, so please join us for an exciting festival of speculative fiction, ancient myths, enactments of imagined horrors and resistance against oppression.

TALOS V: Science Fiction Theatre Festival of London

11-13 December 2025

The Bread & Roses Theatre, London

In 2025, Talos, the original science fiction theatre festival of London, the UK, and Europe, is 10 years old! We’re celebrating with our new festival at the Bread & Roses Theatre in South London!

Plug in and Play Festival, Rotherham 28th-30th October

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 17:40:00 +0100

Collage by Lucia Pires-Reeves

There's a special new opportunity to experience our whimsical, earnest, and extremely gay way of building characters and worlds. This October half-term, Intrapology is bringing a series of alternative indie tabletop storygames to High Street Rotherham. We're going to use cards, dice, crystals, and our own imaginations to tell stories about our magical little town.

These events are intended for attendees aged 16-25.

Plug In & Play is Rotherham's Festival of videogames, digital arts and role-playing activities. It is run by the Children's Capital of Culture.

What we're playing

Hocus Pocus Hyperfocus, Allison Brandy and Cole Wright

A cozy storytelling game for 2-6 players about a little witch with ADHD and all the magic in the world to distract her. A magnificent mess where anything can happen.

28th Oct 2025 at 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM, Guild of Games, High Street Rotherham

Eventbrite booking page

Small Town Skeletons, Furtive Shambles

Casual roleplaying game for 3-5 people, each of whom will play as a teenager who also happens to be a skeleton, caught up in the strangeness of their body, their life and their town. A teen drama with the touch of the uncanny.

29th Oct 2025 at 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM, Guild of Games, High Street Rotherham

Eventbrite booking page

The Ground Itself, Everest Pipkin

One-session storytelling game for 2-5 players. Focusing on place - one specific place, chosen by the group - it considers how places change and remember themselves.

30th Oct 2025 at 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM, Guild of Games, High Street Rotherham

Eventbrite booking page

Access

This event will be on the ground floor at Guild of Games on High Street, Rotherham S60 1PP.

Mobility: There may be a small step to enter the shop.

Infection risk: The number of participants is limited to 5 per event, and we will be using an air purifier with a HEPA filter.

Visual access: We will use audio description throughout, and provide large print versions of the game instructions.

Audio access: This event will not be BSL interpreted - apologies!

Sensory: Stim tools will be available. Rotherham is generally quiet, and we will limit the use of background music, but customers entering the shop may create noise temporarily. Fragrances may be present, but we will limit this as much as possible.

Games Intersectional symposium 19th September 2025

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 12:52:31 +0100

GI Symposium 2025 — Sept 19–20 (Online)

Talks, panels, demos & performance centering queer, disabled, neurodivergent, and migrant voices in games.

19th September, 2.10pm Central European Time

We're sharing Assigned Earth at Birth at this free online event supported by UNESCO. It won't be a full performance with all the usual audiovisual content, but an interactive table read using our original software Intrinsink. This will be our first time integrating Intrinsink into an environment in gather.town, and I'm really excited by how fun it's been in our tests!

We're creating a space for queer, BIPOC, disabled, neurodivergent, migrant people to come together around games, art, care, and resistance. Whether you’re an academic, a student, a developer, a streamer, or just curious about games — you belong here!

To join, email gamesintersectional@gmail.com and request access.

Day 1 poster: Games Intersectional Symposium 2025, Friday schedule with sessions from 10:00 to 15:40 including talks by Nic Kilzer, Alex; demo by Eileen Carette; talk by Flo Schäfer; performance Intrapology by Zoyander Street.

Day 2 poster: Saturday schedule with brunch at 10:00; sessions by Milica Marković, Srikanth, Laura, Jack Gutmann, Ricardo; and Tan Schütz; end at 15:40.

Reflections on You're So Jealous I Bet You Think This Episode Excludes You (20th July 2025, S01E04)

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 21:43:44 +0100

After taking time to rest and recharge, I'm reflecting on the fantastic performance of our fourth episode. Massive thanks to everyone who was able to participate live. We had a beautiful, active audience who created perhaps the best procedural rants we've had so far. It feels like we've hit our stride in terms of the voice and aesthetic of the show, our production process, and our technical execution. The audience feedback reflected how far we've come, bringing together so many different elements to respond to the needs and concerns of our communities.

"The interactive format, the disability centred approach, the political narratives and use of humour, the innovative digital design, the DIY community approach, the Q+ A which allows to understand context and have questions answered."

In this post I've pulled together some quotes from the surveys we carry out at registration and after the show, as well as the live Q&A, all anonymised. I'll try to highlight just some of the talented people on our team who've made all of this possible.

Innovative format

"Big round of applause! First episode ever and it is the most wildly advanced art I've seen in ages! :D"

"The evolution of this from episode 1 to this one has been incredible! The writing, acting, and all the tech...just wow!"

Intrapology's format builds on Squinky's pioneering work in the mid 2010s, and connects it to technologies that have become mainstream in the 2020s - video calling and live streaming. One of the things I'm most proud of is that we're offering something that strikes people as truly new and unlike anything they've experienced before, and yet it's all built on what already exists around us. The "wow" comes from the connection and the message, rather than from some high-tech spectacle.

"The tech team killed it, I can't even imagine the logistics involved"

"This kicks ass, what a wild and interesting format. The procedural monologues!!"

Huge props go out to our partners at Transcend Streaming, who once again delivered an incredible audiovisual experience. We had a terrific time working together on the psychedelic CRT punk visual effects, which were more than a little bit inspired by Balatro. To accommodate the prerecorded mumblings of off-screen characters, this episode had by far the longest cue list we've ever had, and it all came out feeling so slick.

Performance

I think I'll never forget Squinky's absolutely stunning performance of the audience-generated monologue on losing someone you love. There were so many other highlights - Cait's silent reaction as Iris seems to mentally slip away while Paris is distracted by their hungry polycule, the very gentle shade Fadumo brought to Hedi's dismissal of Tea's "god is a gamer" theory, and Xander's outstanding comic delivery of Tea's declaration of the winner of the audience's vote for who would be the gatekeeper to the zeitgeist.

"enjoyed discovering that a character would perform monologues composed of audience statements on theme, and it was integrated well - Squinky did great job performing them in the moment!"

"It was a quite a wild thing watching Squinky read the proc-gen'd audience monologues on such serious themes and subjects! To me it felt like quite the high-wire act. We all sorta know how 'audience participation' can work out on the internet--often it's quite abusive or bad, haha--so I saw it as kind of a brave and audacious 'interactive art' type move for them to read the proc-gen monolog verbatim"

"It's very zappa-esque to me, this sorta thing where the performer is 'playing' the audience and/or the audience is 'playing' the performer"

In addition to the amazing work of our actors, credit also goes out to Tanya Vital, our performance director. Tanya works within a very short period of time to understand each new episode on a deep level, in all of its possible permutations. She works with actors to bring out the emotional power of the story, with special attention to the challenges of live screen acting for webcam.

Screenshot from one of Paris's rants

Creative access

"Thank you for exploring creative access <3"

"The creative access - integrated access for the win."

"Everything you all have been doing so far has been incredibly accessible!"

One of the core goals of this project is to reach audiences that experience barriers to in-person venues, due to chronic illness, disability, or regional inequality - 46% of the people who registered for this performance identified themselves as such, identifying factors such as risk of COVID infection, lack of public transport infrastructure where they live, and the need for accommodations to manage their chronic illness. In addition to the access benefits of online performances, our format makes it very easy to include other supports such as captioning.

"Having been chronically ill & living rurally for a long time, I rarely get to see anything here bc I use all my energy for parenting and work. It's been rough. Was delighted to find this accessible piece of theatre that I'll be able to watch from wherever I happen to need to be. Home, I hope."

I've benefitted hugely from working with access dramaturgs Quiplash to incorporate more access supports into our format, most prominently the audio description that appears to be in the voice of whatever computer or device the protagonist is using. We're continuing to develop this, so that the show gets ever closer to being fully audio described. Also, huge thanks to BSL interpreter Tracey Tyer, who came in at very short notice and took in a huge amount of information to get to grips with our unusual show!

Audio description intro for Hedi, with image created in Teletext

Visual design

It's been so much fun to develop a new aesthetic for each episode, reimagining the video call interface for each character's device. This episode took place on Paris's utopian commune inspired by their experiences in counterculture movements of the 1970s. Art director Jennifer Booth and I started out by looking at hand-drawn psychedelic animation of the 1970s and the smooth, curved designs of space age designers such as Ernest Igl, but then pivoted to a look focused more on CRT televisions of the 1970s.

"The art throughout the episode was incredible! 💜💜"

"Really enjoyed the Teletext sections"

This gave me an excuse to dive into Teletext art that has been inspiring me for several years, especially the art packs published by digital arts collective Mistigris. I was over the moon when artist Atonal Osprey agreed to let us use some of their work, in addition to creating my own Teletext art using edit.tf. I've been dreaming of creating an installation art piece that would use Teletext to convey the existence of a utopian society that broke away from ours in 1979 - that's not exactly how Paris's world came into being, but the outcome is much the same.

Taco Tuesday interstitial video, with Taco GIF created by Raju Rage and the voices of Soft Chaos Cooperative

Quality of writing

This was the first episode that I co-wrote with Squinky, and it's really a testament to the breadth of their talents. They did a particularly outstanding job creating believable dialogue between members of a polycule, a skill they've honed this year in their game A Post-apocalyptic Dinner Party in Purgatory with a Dysfunctional Polycule.

"It was a great show y'all! Really something special. I've never seen anything like it, and that's nice; but beyond the sorta 'novelty' or 'innovation'-type lens is just the fact that the storyworld and content is really good."

"I appreciate that the script speaks on issues that are sorta overtly dangerous to speak about in public (e.g.: talking about freedom for Palestine and that sorta thing)... in this way it continues a long tradition of queerness and/as resistance that I am into"

"Insane how well it balances serious current issues with humour"

When it comes to my own writing, I'm proud that I was able to make people laugh (on purpose!) quite a few times in this episode, while also getting to talk about concepts that I think no other project would allow me to cover. I got a great deal of pleasure from writing Paris's explanation of the zeitgeist: "The interference pattern between yin and yang. A place where distinctions matter immensely, yet everything defies categorisation."

"The increase in drama was really important I think. Videochats are such perfunctory, banal things most of the time (even though it's magical to be able to connect like this). Adding huge spikes of drama and world-ending stakes to videochats helps to solidify this innovative storytelling format (IMO)"

"I love the way the characters attempted to explain 'dialectics' to each other, reminds me of when I was trying to grok Hegel lol"

"Something about the characters reminded me of Good Omens. Love it"

"I like the diverse representation of characters and actors and I think this can be built upon further as well as the narratives and script but I like that the audience gets to influence that also."

In the end, the audience voted for who would be the gatekeeper to the zeitgeist. I won't spoil it here - the edited recording will be available soon, so if you didn't watch it live, you'll get to see it for yourself! Register for updates here or on Patreon to be notified when it happens.

Previously on Intrapology (episodes 1-3)

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:50:31 +0100

In this video, Tea gives a rapid recap on the core events of Intrapology so far.

Episodes 1-3 are available as videos and as interactive playscripts: explore them all in the Episodes collection!

You're So Jealous, I Bet You Think This Episode Excludes You (Intrapology S01E04)

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 14:39:44 +0100

20th July 2025, 7pm UK time (2pm NY, 11am LA)

Paris lives in a utopian polyamorous community on an alien world - but something, someone, somewhere else is pulling them away, revealing how fragile their existence really is. Meanwhile, their estranged ex Iris is literally falling apart. Both may have something to learn from our own world, which somehow keeps on going despite all of its catastrophic contradictions. What does it take to maintain stability in the chaos? Is it always worth the cost? Audiences will be invited to decide who has the power to hold a world together.

‘You're So Jealous, I Bet You Think This Episode Excludes You’ is a live-digital hybrid, interactive sci-fi comedy about denialism and idealism, neurodiversity and neuroqueerness, and the pain of living in a world that works against your survival. It is the fourth story for Intrapology, a series of interactive performances that will explore how people make worlds together, through the allegory of the Transdimensional Research Institute.

This show was a masterpiece, and I am so grateful to have been able to take part in it, as a part of our collective healing and freedom.

There isn't another show that hits in the way this one does. Y'all are really speaking raw necessary messiness of existence and our current moment.

It was perfect for me. I enjoyed the clear instructions at the beginning, the performance and the chat with the actors at the end about the making of and about wider societal issues. It all felt very personal and interactive.

- Audience responses to the June 2025 performance of Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise

Intrapology should appeal to people who listen to Welcome to Night Vale, watch The Good Place, or play Disco Elysium. By taking actions such as voting on dialogue options, the audience guides what the protagonist says, does, and thinks. This will be a mostly unrehearsed live reading, with two actors performing a script that is shaped by messages and votes from the audience via web app.

Funders

Supporting institutions

Audience responses to Softly as in a Morning Sunrise June 2025

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 16:11:05 +0100

More info at Softly as in a Morning Sunrise episode page

This format has so much potential, not just for entertainment but also as a consultation format and for training new actors, writers, directors, technicians and maybe software developers, especially those with a social disadvantage i.e. discriminated against. Very professionally brought together and smoothly delivered.

I enjoyed the performances and the overall look of the thing (guess that's the art direction), and loved the hair and make-up. Really loved the hair and make-up.

There isn't another show that hits in the way this one does. Y'all are really speaking raw necessary messiness of existence and our current moment.

Extremely creative! I felt like I was being transported into the world, and I always love the interactive elements. This production felt more up-scaled from your previous shows on every level (story, acting, tech, etc.). I was blown away.

It was a delightful evening of theatre. I've missed watching live entertainment like it

It was perfect for me. I enjoyed the clear instructions at the beginning, the performance and the chat with the actors at the end about the making of and about wider societal issues. It all felt very personal and interactive.

I want to note that everything that was a frustration point for me from previous shows were resolved in this one! It's obvious you have all been working very hard behind the scenes.

This show was a masterpiece, and I am so grateful to have been able to take part in it, as a part of our collective healing and freedom.

I'm in awe with the tech

More info at Softly as in a Morning Sunrise episode page

Recap Episodes 1 and 2 here!

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 18:38:57 +0100

Softly as in a Morning Sunrise is the third episode of Intrapology. You don't need to have seen Episodes 1 and 2 to follow the story, but if you'd like a refresher or a quick rundown, here are some key facts and short clips.

Quick catch-up

Tea (they/them) figured out that they are an alien anthropologist, born in our world so that they can study it.

Iris (they/them) is a supervisor based at the Transdimensional Research Institute. Except actually, it turns out their world - and every other world apart from ours - has falled apart due to fragmentation.

Now all that’s left in Iris’s world is the one room that we see on their webcam, behind which is a glowing blue void where the rest of society used to be

All of us are inextricably connected to the worlds we inhabit, even if we feel like we don’t belong. In our world, this doesn’t present much of a problem: with billions of beings holding our socially-constructed reality together, the world around us remains stable even we we personally are falling apart. Iris doesn’t have this luxury - their world is highly unstable.

So how is Iris able to contact earth at all? In Episode 2 we met Hedi (she/her), another recently discovered alien anthropologist who wants to know what’s really going on here. What’s the material basis for a world that exists all on its own? Iris dug deep to find out - literally - to discover that their world is built on layers of dirt, junk, jelly, and trauma.

Meanwhile, we live in a colonial capitalist hellscape. And look, I want to be grateful to live in a world that is relatively stable, a world that we are still able to share with billions of other humans. But like… look at this shit.

Full episodes on demand

      <h3>Episode 1: Assigned Earth at Birth</h3></a>
      <strong>Video: </strong><a href="https://peertube.intrapology.com/w/fFzxzY6bkNEbYzptvYY4s1" target="_blank" >Peertube</a> | <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/115784373?collection=856995">Patreon</a><br />
      Interactive playscript: <a href="https://zoy.itch.io/assigned-earth-at-birth">https://zoy.itch.io/assigned-earth-at-birth</a>
      </div>
    
    <div style="max-width: 350px;">
      <a href="__GHOST_URL__/episodes/is-society-in-the-room-with-us-now/"><img src="https://intrapology.micro.blog/uploads/2026/b835bdcada.jpg" width="250px" alt="A glitchy blue image. In a circle, a photo of a black woman in smart-casual neon and a white non-binary person in black. Text reads Intrapology Is Society in the Room with us Now?" />
      
      <h3>Episode 2: Is 'Society' in the Room with us Now?</h3></a>
      <strong>Video:</strong> <a href="https://peertube.intrapology.com/w/qJAMNcKSH92hXbNDQ83FNC">Peertube</a> | <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/125586995?collection=856995">Patreon</a> <br />
      Interactive playscript: <a href="https://zoy.itch.io/is-society-in-the-room-with-us-now">https://zoy.itch.io/is-society-in-the-room-with-us-now</a>
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Audio-described trailer

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:41:29 +0100

The audio-described version of our trailer, which premiered last week at Laura Kate Dale's Access Ability showcase. Any questions about access at our shows? Get in touch: contact (at) intrapology.com

RecessionCore

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 16:24:20 +0100

Episode 3: Softly as in a Morning Sunrise is in one week tomorrow! Yesterday we were featured in Laura Kate Dale's Access Ability showcase, which was a real pleasure.

Ticket sales have been slow, even after this extra bit of publicity. I gather this isn't really anything personal, everyone is struggling right now. So now we're giving away FREE TICKETS using code RecessionCore.

If you are able to support the show, with a paid ticket or with a monthly subscription, I'm so grateful. Although the majority of our funding comes from grants, being able to demonstrate match funding is essential to allowing us to make weird art on the internet like this.

Tickets are now live for 15th June performance of Softly as in a Morning Sunrise

Tue, 20 May 2025 16:10:01 +0100

It's time to register for the 15th June performance of Softly as in a Morning Sunrise!

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Digging down

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 23:09:13 +0100

Here’s the thing you learn if you’re trying to be a good leftist: the superficial things that divide us (the superstructure) are illusions distracting us from the material circumstances that unite us (the base). We are all being oppressed by the same system of labour exploitation under capitalism.

The trouble is, recognising that we have a shared root oppression in common doesn’t actually circumvent the need to do the work at all the levels above it. You can’t build a tunnel through the bedrock and then come out at the other side in the other world. You have to address the different material challenges that different groups face by forming mutual aid networks, find ways to collectively own the means of production, heal the emotional wounds sustained while growing up in capitalism, and also heal the emotional wounds left by the grifters who sold you shitty solutions to those emotional wounds, and create revolutionary new cultural structures such as alternative forms of kinship and a creative commons, and also do that work on the surface that changes the language we use and establishes multilateral communication networks.

The stack

The chthulhucene

Mining

In South Yorkshire, the material base of industrialisation also happens to be literally underground

Serfdom

In feudalism, the peasant class worked the soil, while the landlords owned the ground itself.

Vectorialists

According to MacKenzie Wark, the 21st century has brought about a mode of production in which the ruling classes don’t even own the means of production anymore - they own the vectors across which flow materials, information, and attention.

A series of sculptures by Sheffield-based artist James Clarkson, displayed at Bloc Projects in 2021, portray contemporary industrial processes as vectors. At the time he made this, he was doing survival work at a nearby Amazon warehouse.

Marxism

Base and superstructure model - idealists see the world as driven by ideas, materialists see it as driven by the physical conditions of the mode of production. However, Marx’s materialism didn’t exclude the power of culture/social constructs to reshape physical conditions (indeed, this is what money does). Nevertheless, power is about control of the means of production - it is visible in the superstructure and shapes it, but the real stakes are about the stuff further down towards the base.

McKenzie Wark argues that capitalism has been replaced by vectorialism - so this vertical model, where what’s really at stake is the economic base is supplanted by a model that’s about flows of information. You no longer have to own the means of production in order to be a ruling class.

Computers

In a computer architecture, a computer system is usually represented as consisting of several abstraction levels such as:

software
programmable logic
hardware

Gender - Bettcher ‘Trapped in the wrong theory’

Behind the gender presentation is a sexed body.

reality enforcement says “that’s really a woman, merely dressed as a man,”

But behind the sexed body is a gender identity.

the wrong-body narrative says “that’s really a man, disguised by a misleading body.”

But behind the gender identity there is a sexed neurology.

a neurological hypothesis says “something real in the brain predisposes us to a social identity”

But the sexed neurology develops in a gendered social environment.

the brain develops through synaptic pruning in a specific context, shaping our neural networks

But behind the gendered social environment there is a sexed natural environment.

the social existence of gender reflects humanity understanding sexual reproduction in other species

But behind the sexed natural environment there is a gendered practice of agriculture.

the notion of binary gender shaped what we were able to understand about other species

(A debate like this should probably be between two non-main characters, with the audience choosing what side the main character is going to take)

Blue is Bettcher’s original text, I’ve extended it in white

Insight Inquiry / Esoterica

What is beneath thought? Is there a self underlying conscious awareness that produces thought? Or does thought simply arise?

What is beneath your experience of material reality? Is there an intrinsic thinginess to the things you encounter? Do you find anything other than thought there?

Buddhist teaching identifies states of increasing clarity and depth in meditation - and conversely, the heaping up of conscious experience that produce the illusion of a self.

Multi-worlding

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 01:55:12 +0100

Your standard sci-fi multiverse usually operates based on the parallel worlds hypothesis in quantum physics - when a "decision" is made, a parallel world is created for each possible outcome, creating incalculable parallel worlds that may have a lot in common or may be completely foreign to everything you know to be true. In such a system, each parallel world is the same size, giving you an incomprehensibly large multiverse for heroes and villains to battle over.

Intrapology draws a lot more from the humanities, particularly feminist technoscience studies, new materialism, and material semiotics. In Intrapology, the world does not just exist separately to the cognition and agency of living beings - we are all, together, involved in an ongoing “worlding”.

I keep seeing the bit of the promo video where I casually mention social constructivism, and cringing a little. Am I really out here in public referencing notoriously abstract postmodern philosophy as if this ISN'T going to alienate people? I am trying to reassure myself that I'm not trying to win over the kind of person who is turned off by a little bit of philosophy - Intrapology should appeal to the kind of person who, for example, loves Star Trek but is critical of its ongoing commitment to colonial institutions.

Then I have a secondary cringe - am I even a social constructivist IRL? A few weeks ago I was listening to a lecture by Mackenzie Wark, in which she jokes "saying something is socially constructed to me is like saying it comes from God... is 'the social' in the room with us right now?" (clip of this moment on Youtube) The theorists I love don't just point at things and say they are socially constructed, they explore how the material and the social work together and shape one another. For me, the interesting thing about this dichotomy is how tangled up these two things are. I've been in abstract meditative states where thought itself becomes an object of observation, and even then I was experiencing reality through processes that were shaped by society. "You can take the enby out of society", etc.

So when I say that Intrapology takes social constructivism literally, I mean that I find it fun and generative to think about a fully socially-constructed world, because I think it gives us tools for thinking about our own world. In Intrapology, "people who view the world in a way that erases your existence would literally be unable to see you, and you would not be able to reach them - when this occurs, our once-shared universe fragments into smaller, separate worlds". Like art scenes and fandoms, smaller worlds have the capacity to be much weirder - for better and for worse - because they are not anchored in the larger collective sense of what is normal.

Intrapology will explore how worlds fragment, and how we can reconnect. Although it's rooted in theory and the stakes are existential, my aim is to use this to tell stories about characters dealing with the big feelings that are stirred up in me when I experience a threat to my own fundamental need to live in the same world as other people. I want to focus on the emotional core of how we come to live in a different world from people who were once our allies and kin.

I want the fragmenting worlds of Intrapology to include futuristic households engaged in “kitchen table polyamory”, creepy retrograde enclaves of toxic masculinity, catastrophic solo worlds occupied by lonely shut-ins who have lost everything, and massive warehouse raves where the vibes are so good everyone got swept up in their own mini-universe. Since there are no superpowers in Intrapology that allow a person to overcome the fundamental nature of reality, moving between worlds should always have consequences that reveal our entangled nature.

Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise (Intrapology S01E03)

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:49:40 +0100

Can you be friends with your ex, even if you now live in different worlds? After spending years alone in their own pocket universe, Iris receives an unexpected message from their ex, Paris. Iris and Paris reflect on what happened between them: could their relationship have ever survived the cataclysmic breakdown in shared reality? Audiences will be invited to consider how to forgive the truest betrayal of all - the failure to build a world together.

Softly as in a Morning Sunrise (Intrapology S01E03) by Zoyander Street

Play the script, including the routes not taken, on our Interactive Playscript! Watch the recording of the 25th July performance on Peertube (embedded below) or Patreon.

‘Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise’ is a live-digital hybrid, interactive sci-fi comedy about denialism and idealism, neurodiversity and neuroqueerness, and the pain of living in a world that works against your survival. It is the third story for Intrapology, a series of interactive performances that will explore how people make worlds together, through the allegory of the Transdimensional Research Institute. You do not need to have seen episodes 1 and 2 to follow the story.

This show was a masterpiece, and I am so grateful to have been able to take part in it, as a part of our collective healing and freedom.

There isn't another show that hits in the way this one does. Y'all are really speaking raw necessary messiness of existence and our current moment.

It was perfect for me. I enjoyed the clear instructions at the beginning, the performance and the chat with the actors at the end about the making of and about wider societal issues. It all felt very personal and interactive.

- Audience responses to the June 2025 performance

Press and listings

Funders

Supporting institutions

  <a href="https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/profile/zoyander-street" target="_blank"><img src="https://intrapology.micro.blog/uploads/2026/4863dec810.jpg" alt="Sheffield Theatres" /></a>
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Is 'Society' in the Room with us Now? (Intrapology S01E02)

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 01:32:52 +0100

Hedi (Fadumo Hassan) is a rising star of the tech world, and nobody knows she is secretly an alien anthropologist - except for Tea (Xander Graves), who has recently learned the same about themself. Hedi is a successful tech professional, and is optimistic about the future - we’re going to solve all our problems with increasingly powerful technology, just like Star Trek. But when the tech world lets her down, it's up to the audience to decide show she responds.

📺

Video: Peertube | Patreon
Interactive playscript: zoy.itch.io/is-society-in-the-room-with-us-now

‘Is Society in the Room with Us Now?’ is a live-digital hybrid, interactive sci-fi comedy about doomerism, neurodiversity / neuroqueerness, and the pain of living in a world that works against your survival. It is the second story for Intrapology, a series of interactive stories that will explore how people make worlds together, through the allegory of the Transdimensional Research Institute. You do not need to have seen episode 1 to follow the story.

Performances

21st November 2024, online with Queerness and Games Conference

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    </div><h2 id="press">Press</h2><p><a href="https://voidspacezine.substack.com/p/voidspace-dispatches-november-2024?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=2068778&amp;post_id=151044764&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=true&amp;r=219pe8&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email">Voidspace Dispatches</a></p><blockquote>‘Is “Society” In The Room With Us Now?’ is Episode 2 of Intrapology, which aims to tell stories about how worlds are made, how they break apart, and how we can reconnect.</blockquote><p>Museums Sheffield, Making Ways, November 2024</p><blockquote>Intrapology is a live interactive online queer sci-fi performance on the perspectives of neurodivergent queer folk, as alien anthropologists doing fieldwork on earth.</blockquote>

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Supporting institutions

  <a href="https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/profile/zoyander-street" target="_blank"><img src="https://intrapology.micro.blog/uploads/2026/b9eb49fffc.jpg" alt="Sheffield Theatres" /></a>
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Assigned Earth at Birth (Intrapology S01E01)

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 01:25:44 +0100

Tea (Xander Graves) has discovered that they are not an ordinary human - they are a transdimensional being, assigned to earth to carry out anthropological fieldwork. In this play, they have their first meetings via video call with their otherworldly drag king supervisor, Iris (Caitlin Magnall-Kearns). Understandably, Tea is furious about being assigned to such a horrible project, and demands to be reassigned; but relocation has unanticipated consequences for both characters.

Next performance: TALOS V Science Fiction Theatre Festival, Bread & Roses Theatre, 11th and 12th December 2025

📺

Video: Peertube | Patreon
Interactive playscript: zoy.itch.io/assigned-earth-at-birth

‘Assigned Earth at Birth’ is a live-digital hybrid, interactive sci-fi comedy about doomerism, neurodiversity / neuroqueerness, and the pain of living in a world that works against your survival. It is the first story for Intrapology, a series of interactive stories that will explore how people make worlds together, through the allegory of the Transdimensional Research Institute.

From audience feedback at workshop performances

“[Made me feel] Weirdly comforted? Like life makes slightly more sense”

“It made me feel transported.”

“Genius, very funny”

“The form is really bold + ambitious.”

“Made me think/reflect on the complexities of navigating life and society in our world.”

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    </div><h2 id="performances">Performances</h2><p>11th and 12th December 2025, <a href="__GHOST_URL__/news/talos-v-science-fiction-theatre-festival-assigned-earth-at-birth/" rel="noreferrer">Bread and Roses Theatre with TALOS V Sci-fi Theatre Festival</a></p><p>26th September 2024, online with <a href="https://nowplaythis.net/intrapology/" rel="noreferrer">Now Play This Presents</a></p><p>9th January 2024<strong>, </strong>Arizona State University as part of the Worlds in Play Festival</p><p>10th November 2023, Theatre Delicatessen as part of the Social Model &amp; More Festival</p><h2 id="screenings">Screenings</h2><p>Wednesday 13th November 2024, at '<a href="https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/event/trans-genre-trans-form-short-film-and-transness-in-2020s/" rel="noreferrer">Trans Genre, Trans Form: Short film and transness in 2020s</a>' symposium at Edge Hill University</p><h2 id="press">Press</h2><p><a href="https://nowplaythis.net/presents/">Now Play This Presents</a></p><blockquote>Our inaugural Presents games span the breadth of playful media, expertly showing how games can be used to tackle complex topics. The Strand Avian Society invites players into a secret world of birds through a site-specific street game, and Intrapology blends game and theatre to create an innovative interactive performance.</blockquote><p><a href="https://www.theatredeli.co.uk/news/meet-the-artists-for-the-social-model-more-festival">Theatre Delicatessen - <strong>Meet the Artists for the Social Model &amp; More Festival</strong></a></p><blockquote>We couldn’t be happier to announce these brilliant artists who will explore the social model during this festival, imagining new models for conceptualising disability, while shoring up the essentials of the social contract against those who would undermine it.</blockquote><p><a href="https://www.welcometosheffield.co.uk/content/events/assigned-earth-at-birth-by-zoyander-street/">Welcome to Sheffield - Assigned Earth at Birth by Zoyander Street</a></p>

Funders

Supporting institutions

  <a href="https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/profile/zoyander-street" target="_blank"><img src="https://intrapology.micro.blog/uploads/2026/193b0eb297.jpg" alt="Sheffield Theatres" /></a>
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Introducing Intrapology

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 23:02:14 +0100

Intrapology is all about how people make worlds together, and the cataclysmic social fragmentation that threatens to unmake them.

This series of interactive online performances focuses on the perspectives of neurodivergent queer folk, as alien anthropologists doing fieldwork on earth. They interact via video call with their supervisors at the fictional Transdimensional Research Institute, an alien university that has been decimated by cuts to the fabric of reality. Together they expose the comedy and terror of living in a world that was not built with people like you in mind.

The audience collectively shapes the story, experiencing the show on a web page that looks like the protagonist’s computer desktop. Through this online format, Intrapology aims to reach disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent audiences that have been left behind by the return to in-person events. It aims to move beyond the limitations of online theatre as we know it, with an approach to design that draws on alternative indie games culture.

“This is like a narrative-driven indie videogame, but it’s performed live by real actors”, says creator Zoyander Street, who has been working at the weird fringes of games since the early 2010s. This project began life as a 2021 collaboration between Zoyander and Canadian queer games artist D. Squinkifer. “As a chronically-ill queer person living in Rotherham in the 2020s, it can sometimes feel like the rest of the world has vanished. I rely on online events and communities to feel alive and connected to others.”

Intrapology is created by Dr Zoyander Street (they/them). Zoyander is a neuroqueer and disabled writer, researcher, and digital artist, creating interactive media based on social and historical research. Their work has been shown around the world, including Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, Vancouver, and London. They are a supported artist at Sheffield Theatres, and a fellow of the Imaginary College at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination.

Intrapology’s queer sci-fi storyworld is inspired by the lived experience of queer disabled people, as well as research in feminist technoscience studies. It developed out of a collaboration with D. Squinkifer, and its format is based on their MFA project Coffee: A Misunderstanding, which was a finalist at renowned indie games festival IndieCade 2014 and toured internationally.

D. Squinkifer (they/he) creates games and playable experiences about gender identity, social awkwardness, and miscellaneous silliness. They are responsible for such critically acclaimed works as Dominique Pamplemousse in “It’s All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!” and Coffee: A Misunderstanding. In 2015, they were recognized as part of Forbes’s “30 under 30 in Games”.

Caitlin Magnall-Kearns (she/they) plays the role of Iris. They are a writer from East Belfast, and currently part of the BBC Comedy Collective 2024. Their full-length play Trifled recently debuted at the New Theatre in Dublin.

Fadumo Hassan (she/her) began her career as a screen actor, and later transitioned to theatre with the support of the Sheffield Theatres Young Company and New Dramaturgs Group 2023. In 2023 she performed on the Crucible stage as part of Utopia Theatre’s ‘All Our Goals’. This year she was part of the R&D for Stand and Be Counted Theatre, a theatre of sanctuary for refugees and asylum seekers.

Xander Graves (they/them) is a non-binary actor based in Sheffield. Their recent roles include the short film Heirloom, Sheffield Theatres productions of Something Old, Something New and Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a scratch night performance of new work Cupid Play. Xander has been a passionate member of Intrapology from the early days of the project and resonated deeply with the character of Tea, as someone who is also non-binary, neurodiverse, and pissed off at the state of the world.

In addition to a handful of supporters on Patreon, Intrapology has been made possible by a Project Grant from Arts Council England, and its software is developed with the support of Innovate UK and Creative UK. Early development was supported by the Sheffield Theatres Bank Cohort, Barrel Organ Theatre’s Barnsley LIVE, and the New Conversations Canada-UK Exchange (British Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Farnham Maltings, High Commission of Canada in the UK).

Funders

Supporting institutions

  <a href="https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/profile/zoyander-street" target="_blank"><img src="https://intrapology.micro.blog/uploads/2026/4d9ac2faa0.jpg" alt="Sheffield Theatres" /></a>
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About Intrapology

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 19:40:00 +0100

Neurodivergence can feel like being an alien, studying human society - in Temple Grandin’s words, an “Anthropologist on Mars”.

Extending this metaphor into a narrative storyworld, Intrapology is a series of online interactive performances representing the experiences of neuroqueer and chronically ill people, as video calls between alien anthropologists and their supervisors at the Transdimensional Research Institute.Intrapology is about how people make worlds together, and the cataclysmic social fragmentation that threatens to unmake them.

Our sci-fi multiverse is inspired by critical post-humanities and new materialism, as well as the lived experience of queer disabled people. We take social constructivism literally to the point of absurdism: each world is enacted by the society that inhabits it, and when coherent shared worldviews break down, a world fragments into smaller, separate realities.

The question is, why are we earthbound beings socially constructing a giant shithole? And is it possible to engage purposefully in worldbuilding for a better future?

We promise it's actually quite funny. It has to be, or else it would be a huge bummer.

Format

Our innovative custom-made web app allows the audience to influence what the protagonist says and does. This reflects how the characters, and their world, have been shaped by society.

Our shows function as semi-rehearsed live readings carried out over video call, accessed through a web page that looks like the protagonist’s computer, so you feel like you are in their space. The script shown to actors changes on the fly, responding to audience interactions such as voting on multiple choice dialog options, and typing in short messages to contribute to a stream of consciousness rant.

Community support

Intrapology launched on Patreon in January 2024, where a small community of supporters have been able to receive updates about our projects. You're currently looking at our Ghost site, which offers another way to support us and access exclusive content. Existing Patreon supporters will be able to access exclusive members content on this site.