Pyper lives in world where AI-generated teens struggle with their own reality, at Frederic Wood Theatre from March 11 to 28
Award-winning play by Susanna Fournier offers an unsettling, witty update of fairy-tale themes as old as Pinocchio and the Pied Piper
UBC Theatre’s Pyper. Photo by Javier Sotres
UBC Theatre presents Pyper at the Frederic Wood Theatre from March 11 to 28
THE TEEN MOVIE meets science fiction in a new play getting its West Coast premiere at UBC Theatre—one whose backstory is almost as interesting as the one that will hit the stage.
In Susanna Fournier’s Pyper, 10 cyborg, literally “AI-generated” teens are concerned about being decommissioned before graduation, so they try to build a time capsule to prove they exist.
Cue an origin story that harks back to a mysterious piper in the town of Hamelin, and—with shades of Pinocchio—an old puppet maker who discovers a talking block of wood. Among the fairy-tale touchstones, Fournier works in urgent themes about what it means to grow up in a world obsessed with algorithms and constant technological obsolescence.
Add generous doses of humour and teen angst, and you’ve got what the show’s promotion materials intriguingly promise as “The Breakfast Club meets The Terminator”.
Pyper has its real origins in high school, as a commission by the Cawthra Park Secondary School drama program in Mississauga, Ontario. In 2025, it went on to win the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Tom Hendry Award for best new script for young audiences. The peer assessment called it “an imaginative, layered piece that explores contemporary themes using a smart, original structure and theatricality.” This is its university premiere, and it will be published in book form by Playwrights Canada Press in March.
The production at UBC is directed by Leora Morris and stars BFA and MFA students. 
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