A live, audience-centred experience exploring what it means to nurture life in the age of AI — playfully anchored in Frankenstein.

At first glance, this is the story of how Mary Shelley created her monster. Look again, it’s the story we’re living now. And beneath it all — a different kind of story altogether.

Echoing Mary Shelley’s fears of creation without care, the show draws a line from the birth of the industrial machine to today’s AI “revolution”.

How can we find our footing with nothing to hold onto?
How can we find our voice when scared to speak up?
How can we create futures when anxious about today?

Part horror, part comedy, part interactive live-art ritual, Mary & Her Monster invites audiences to step out of the noise — the endless flood of stories and (mis)information — and into an electric space of shared possibility.

2026 R&D includes interviews with leading voices in the development of ethical AI and workshops with mothers, creatives concerned about AI, and women and non-binary people in tech.

Supported by Battersea Arts Centre, Camden People’s Theatre, The Pleasance, RichMix, and Stanley Arts.

Early experiments have taken place at Pleasance Futures Festival, CPT’s Calm Down Dear, and Omnibus Theatre.

Dial-A-Future is an app-based interactive audio experience that invites you to reflect on the direction you’re going in life. Using game design and original music, the work offers an immersive guided meditation, in which a candid automated attendant guides you through a series of questions and personalised responses. Part coaching session, part existential comedy, Dial-A-Future raises questions about how to live most fully yourself, when the world demands otherwise.

• Download the app 

• Mute your notifications.

• Find someplace quiet and comfortable to sit, where you will be undisturbed.

• Listen through your headphones.

• Tap the screen to answer the questions.

July 2021 | Originally commissioned by Attenborough Arts Centre

Written, Conceived, + Performed - Catherine Duquette
Original Music + Sound Design - Casually Here
App Design + Programming - Ed Biden

Using the construct of a live dating game and an original dating app, this playable show shamelessly leads us to reveal what we do for love – from the playful to the pathetic, the pragmatic to the passionate. Every show depends on the audience - the themes they want to explore and the honest, emotional risks they want to take.

“Absolutely loved @catduquette's #Instalove. Life changing theatre. What a talent. There's nothing else like this show.” Audience Tweet

“An exciting social experiment and effective artistic coup - Duquette has an impressive talent for motivating complete strangers to emotionally strip in the merciless stage light and for creating a space to project all possible preferences.” Der Tagesspiegel, Germany

“Catherine Duquette is a flawless improviser who transitions from her prepared monologues to riffing off the audience’s reactions seamlessly.” EdFringe Review

Aug 2017 | theSpaceUK, Edinburgh Fringe Festival

July 2017 & Oct 2017 | Premiered at English Theatre Berlin International Performing Arts Centre

Director - Ruth Sergel | Costumes - Rebekka Dornhege Reyes | App Design - Ed Biden | Video - Dian Zagorchinov | Video Editing - Joseph Campbell | Photos - Jerun Vahle

In this real-time bid for fame, Catherine works with the audience, trying anything, to become a star all the while challenging our role as celebrity spectator/creator. The result is a complex deconstruction of how fame is made and how it shapes our understanding of the world from a young age.

“Duquette unabashedly and disarmingly invites her audience into a goal as noble as it is sincere – to be celebrated for her invention of personally interactive art for(u)ms examining social issues.” Huffington Post

“Catherine said everything I haven’t had the courage to say, especially as a woman in the arts.” Audience Feedback

March 2017 | Camden People’s Theatre

Oct 2014 & 2015 | English Theatre Berlin International Performing Arts Centre

Director - Ruth Sergel | Video - Joseph Campbell

Using video and paper craft, this live art intervention grapples with what it means to put a work on paper from the perspective of a writer and the dangerous pursuit of grasping and creating self by transferring ideas to the page.

May 2013 | Group Show, MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien | Month of Performance Art Berlin

Nov 2013 | Group Show, TRAFO Arts Centre Poland

In this rhythmic, interactive inquiry on depression, Catherine creates six intimate and at times violent narratives in relation to six objects: Belts, Stairs, Mirrors, Hands, Eyes, and Bodies.

Feb 2013 | Sophiensaele, 100 Grad Festival | English Theatre Berlin, ExpatExpo Festival

Using video and text, this 10 min piece investigates the notion of “climbing to the top” and the politically troubling walls we create to organize chaos, to define space and shape identity.

Someone is always above; someone is always below; and they all need each other to sustain the wall. But what happens if one chooses not to climb? What happens if one pauses in the pursuit?

June 2015 | Let Me In Festival, Berlin

Nov 2015 | 18591KM Art Exhibition, Silent Green, Berlin

In this rapid-fire, improvised 10 min rant, Catherine eviscerates the formality of breaking into an arts scene, making real time observations, demanding honesty from her peers, and fulfilling a wish for audience contact without explicitly asking for it.

May 2014 | Month of Performance Art Berlin