APRIL 7–10

Four years ago, a man called John Titor who claimed to be a time traveler began posting copiously on Internet message boards. He provided incredibly detailed pictures and diagrams of his time machine and spouted plausible-sounding physics to explain how it worked. He claimed that a civil war in the United States would start in 2004 in response to the increasing power of the police; by 2015, thermonuclear war will have destroyed half the world. After cautioning people to get away from cities, learn how to raise their own food and fire a gun, and find five people in the area that they would trust with their lives, Titor proclaimed in March 2001 that he was going back to the year 2036—and was never heard from again. Taking the position that it doesn’t matter if Titor was real (and that Philip K. Dick is really rad), Cyburbia Productions’ Kirby Malone and Gail Scott White—working with 26 artists from George Mason University’s Multimedia Performance Studio—have pasted together Titor’s words, extensive video and animation projections (pictured), eight singer-actors, an eight-piece band, and a score that conjoins samples, triphop, opera, and Bengali songs. The result, Time Traveler Zero Zero, promises a “live movie” in which the interactions between people and projections are an attempt to stave off the coming police state. It’s definitely not your grandmother’s rock opera—at least not in this worldline—so prepare for the future when shows start at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 7, through Saturday, April 10, at George Mason University Center for the Arts’ Harris Theater, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax. $10. (703) 993-8865. (Bidisha Banerjee)