Counterpilot is a collective of interdisciplinary artists directed by Nathan Sibthorpe, with Mike Willmett (sound designer), Christine Felmingham (technical designer), Elizabeth Hunt (creative producer), and a constellation of Australian artists, technicians and tinkerers.
Together, we create interactive performance works, activating audiences with new technology, rich design, and transmedia storytelling. Counterpilot seeks to transform the familiar, juxtaposing rich fictional worlds against a backdrop of the everyday.
By subverting real social circumstances, we co-opt our participants as authentic performers. In this way we are harnessing what we believe to be the most exciting thing about theatre - the live audience. Our works enable participants to observe themselves responding in real ways to hyper-real situations. We seek to provoke refreshed perceptions through acts of trouble, mischief and low-key chaos. We play in the spaces between people, and we poke at the tensions that bind us.
Inspired by traditions of ‘autoteatro’ (automatic instructional theatre), our practice employs new interactive technologies in order to activate audiences with agency, curiosity and play. With interactive tools like geo-locative audio, SMS distribution networks, RFID voting systems, multi-layered video, multi-channel audio, biometric sensors, and AI technologies, Counterpilot seeks to put the audience at the centre of every performance experience – whether it be for physical journeys, experiential narrative, or heightened gameplay.
Counterpilot was originally co-founded in 2014 by Sandra Carluccio and Nathan Sibthorpe as a way of combining their collaborative practices in live art and contemporary performance. Since 2015, Counterpilot have produced more than 16 major works, in partnership with organisations including Metro Arts, Brisbane Powerhouse, Next Wave Festival, Brisbane Festival, Sydney Festival, Darwin Festival, Museum of Brisbane, Adelaide Fringe, and World Science Festival Brisbane. During this time we have received six industry awards and been nominated for at least seven others, including the Lord Mayor’s Award for Best New Australian Work for Crunch Time (2018 Matilda Awards) and The Judges Award for Adrift (2022 Matilda Awards).
We are greatly influenced by national and international companies including Blast Theory, pvi collective, Darkfield, The Last Great Hunt, One Step at a Time Like This, The Border Project, Sandpit, and Il Pixel Rosso.
Our experiences harness a sense of togetherness that perseveres. When all else is lost, we still have each other. Even if just for a moment.