This paper was given as part of the Intermediality and Performance working group at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) world congress at the University of Melbourne, Australia on July 7, 2026.

Abstract

Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis is a live performance by Mexican-American artist Tosca Terán that stages ecological interdependence as an embodied experience in a British Columbia-inspired old-growth forest. Built on the Resonite VR platform, audiences are guided by performers playing forest fauna (silk moth, banana slug, bark beetle) on a shared quest to enter the “mycelium network” and meet the “mycelial entity.”

The performance shifts between linear and non-linear storytelling. Spoken (and signed) performer encounters propel the quest and form a first layer of interspecies relation. Non-linear narratives are embedded in the VR forest itself, which functions as a sensory interface, delivering audio-visual-haptic stimuli in response to a cybernetic apparatus outside the VR environment. This apparatus consists of living mycelium inside a terrarium, fitted with electrodes that route bioelectrical activity into a synthesizer and a PC, feeding real-time biodata into the virtual environment. Some participants wear Muse 2 EEG devices, integrating their meditative states into the performance. These data streams modulate the forest into an evolving symbiotic ecosystem.

Drawing on Bateson’s relational ecology of mind, Wiener’s account of control and communication, and Haraway’s concepts of “companion species” and “co-constitution,” this paper reads Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis as biofeedback theatre: a loop of sensing, response, and adjustment across humans, fungi, performers, and code. By translating living signals into legible media events, do participants witness mutual regulation, co-regulation, or a control loop that aestheticizes interdependence? The work shows how theatre can make the politics of control, mediation, and relational agency perceptible at the scale of sensation.