"We Have No Need of Other Worlds (We Need Mirrors)" by Graham Sack

"We Have No Need of Other Worlds (We Need Mirrors)" by Graham Sack

Presented by Onassis ONX

UTR 2026 Under Construction Program

SCHEDULE:

Friday, January 9 @ 6 PM
Saturday, January 10 @ 5:30 PM
Saturday, January 10 @ 9:30 PM
Sunday, January 11 @ 2 PM
Sunday, January 11 @ 7 PM
Monday, January 12 @ 7 PM

VENUE:

Onassis ONX, 390 Broadway, Floor 4, New York, NY, 10013.

RUN TIME:

60 minutes

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE:

A son keeps vigil at his father’s bedside, reading aloud from the old man’s journals—cosmic reflections inspired by voyages across oceans and through jungles. The words feel eerily prescient, as though they were written with foreknowledge of this very moment. Perhaps the lesion in his father’s brain isn’t a disease at all, but a wormhole: a tunnel through space and time connecting different selves, different worlds.

We Have No Need of Other Worlds (We Need Mirrors) transforms that vigil into a live theater and immersive media experience exploring the relationship between family, memory, and technology. Part elegy, part biometric séance, the work uses interactive technology, video, and sound to link performers and audience members to a digital phantasm—a distortion in the fabric of the universe—asking whether memory itself might be a signal traveling through time, seeking someone to receive it.

Note: This performance includes strobing lights.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Graham Sack is an award-winning writer, director, actor, and academic whose work explores the intersection of storytelling and new technology. He is the founder of Chronotope Films and a recipient of the Sundance Institute Sloan Foundation Episodic Fellowship for The Harvard Computers, a television series based on the true story of America’s first female astronomers.

In virtual and immersive media, Graham was commissioned by Penguin Random House to adapt and direct George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo (winner of the Man Booker Prize) into a virtual-reality film distributed by The New York Times’ VR division. The project—the first-ever adaptation of a novel into VR—was a finalist for the Emmy Award for Innovation in Interactive Programming and was named one of Time Magazine’s “Top 5 Must-See Virtual-Reality Experiences of the Year.”

His other immersive works have been supported by Google, Samsung, and Felix & Paul Studios, and presented at Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, New York Theater Workshop, Sotheby’s, Vancouver International Festival, and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. Most recently, he was commissioned by four-time Academy Award nominee Alexander Rodnyansky (Loveless, Leviathan, East/West, Stalingrad) to adapt Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein into a limited television series starring Joel Kinnaman.

Graham began his career as a child actor on Broadway, starring in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, and appeared in films such as Dunston Checks In and television series including Law & Order and New York Undercover. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, Writers Guild of Canada, Screen Actors Guild, Actors’ Equity Association, Onassis ONX, and an alumnus of NEW INC, the New Museum’s art, design, and technology incubator.

ABOUT THE VENUE:

Onassis ONX, 390 Broadway, Floor 4, New York, NY, 10013.

By Subway: N/Q/R/W to Canal Street; J/Z to Canal Street; 6 to Canal Street.

Visitors can enter the building at 390 Broadway through the street-level entrance. A wheelchair-accessible ramp is available at the entrance for easy access. Once inside, an elevator services all floors, including the third floor where Onassis ONX is located. ADA-compliant restrooms with ramp access are available onsite. Service animals are welcome at Onassis ONX. Please notify an Onassis ONX employee and ensure that service animals are appropriately trained and remain under control at all times. For questions or to request additional accommodations, please contact contact@onx.studio, with subject line ADA Access, at least 72 hours before your visit.

ABOUT ONASSIS ONX:

Onassis ONX is the Onassis Foundation’s global platform dedicated to elevating innovative creators in the development, presentation, and distribution of new media artworks and immersive experiences. It provides artists and teams with capacity-building programs, incubation and applied research initiatives, acceleration services, seed funding, exhibition opportunities, fellowships, and partnership-driven collaborations through its hubs in Athens and New York City. This holistic engagement throughout the creative process enables artists to build worlds at the frontiers of AI, immersive, spatial computing, gaming, and other emergent time-based media. Onassis ONX provides a stage for creatives to imagine new futures by questioning the systems through which culture is produced, circulated, and remembered, actively fostering new forms of creative expression to meaningfully engage with audiences around the world.

ABOUT UNDER THE RADAR:

For over two decades, the Under the Radar Theater Festival has brought bold, risk-taking work to New York City, celebrating groundbreaking theater and performance from around the world and just down the street. Produced in collaboration with dozens of venues at a selection of historic and emerging theaters across New York City, the festival showcases innovative multidisciplinary artists whose work speaks powerfully to the present moment. Under the Radar’s influence sets a cultural standard that resonates through the artistic landscape far further and beyond our January schedule. In coordination with Festival founder and Director Mark Russell, Producers Thomas O. Kriegsmann and Sami Pyne of ArKtype, and with the addition of this year’s highly-esteemed Co-Creative Directors Meropi Peponides and Kaneza Schaal, UTR is positioned to continue to capitalize on the Festival’s rich history and expand on a tradition of trailblazing new direction. The 21st edition of UTR will run from January 7-25, 2026 presenting over 32 productions at various partner organizations across the city.