U of T · September 2026 0% Contents Subscribe
Audiences experience [EOL]. End of Life at the 2025 Berliner Festspiele in the Gropius Bau.
← The Practice · U of T, September 2026

Funerals in Virtual Reality

At pauper's funerals in Austria, Victoria Halper and her creative partner were sometimes the only mourners for people they knew only by their online traces. That experience became '[EOL]. End of Life,' a VR theatre piece that won the 2025 Nestroy Special Prize.

Alumni Digest desk · from U of T Alumni News
Above: Audiences experience [EOL]. End of Life at the 2025 Berliner Festspiele in the Gropius Bau. Photo: Fabian Schellhorn – Berliner Festspiele

Victoria Halper graduated from UTM's theatre and drama studies program in 2010 and moved to Austria, her parents' native country, where she now co-runs the experimental theatre company DARUM in Vienna with creative partner Kai Krösche.

The idea for her VR piece '[EOL]. End of Life' came from attending Austria's state-sponsored 'pauper's funerals.' For five people, Halper and Krösche were the only attendees, tracing the deceased afterward through Google Maps reviews and abandoned Facebook accounts — for one, the only trace they could find was a photo reflection caught in a McDonald's window.

In the piece, audience members wear VR headsets and decide which digital traces of a life to preserve or delete, an idea sharpened by the pandemic's push into digital media and AI. Shown at the 2025 Berliner Festspiele in the Gropius Bau, '[EOL]' was nominated for Berlin's Theatertreffen and won the 2025 Nestroy Special Prize.

Reported from Meet the UTM alum redefining performance through virtual reality, by Kate Martin (U of T Alumni News, April 22, 2026).

More from the original reporting: alumni.utoronto.ca/news/meet-utm-alum-redefining-performance-virtual-reality

Until the next issue

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Sixty-nine stories end this issue, but the university doesn't pause between them. A new orientation week is already being planned; a lab somewhere on campus is already running the next experiment. Alumni Digest will be there in October for the next one.

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