Softly as in a Morning Sunrise (Intrapology S01E03)

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. In this live interactive online story, 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.

Developed by Zoyander Street and D. Squinkifer

Written by Zoyander Street and Sarah Davis Reynolds 

Starring Xander Graves, Fadumo Hassan, Caitlin Magnall-Kearns, and D. Squinkifer

Made to be performed

This is an interactive playscript, written for a live interactive online queer sci-fi performance. When staged using our original software Intrinsink, the audience votes for what the main character will say and do, as well as contributing free text to stream-of-consciousness monologues.

Intrapology

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

Past performances

15th June 2025, Intrapology.com

Contact us

contact@intrapology.com

020 3287 9692

Instagram and Tiktok: @intrapology

Website: https://intrapology.com

Press kit: https://intrapology.notion.site/

About us

Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise is co-written by Sarah Davis Reynolds and Zoyander Street. Sarah Davis Reynolds is the co-creator and game designer of Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern, the officially-licensed D&D interactive stage show, currently running off-Broadway in NYC. D&DTST and Sarah’s work on it have been featured in publications including TIME magazine, The New York Times, Variety, and Rolling Stone, and at numerous conventions including San Diego and New York Comic Cons.

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.

In addition to a handful of supporters on Patreon, Intrapology has been made possible by a Project Grant from Arts Council England. Software development supported by 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).