How to describe the concept behind Quigital Corporate Retreat by the Architek percussion ensemble, soprano Sarah Albu, and creators Eliot Britton, Patrick Hart, David Arbez, and Kevin McPhillips? I won’t repeat what has already been said in the interview I conducted with Ben Duinker from Architek, Sarah Albu, and Elliot Britton. I therefore invite you to consult it without delay (French and English).
I will rather focus on the show itself, which I attended on November 13, 2025, at the Sala Rossa in Montreal. What must be said, first of all, is that this show represents a renewed form of the concept of total art in which the audience is involved. A good half hour before the first notes are played, we are already in the show itself. We are welcomed not as spectators, but rather as employees of the Quigital corporation. The event is a professional retreat, a session of boosting and motivation, collective brainstorming, but also, unbeknownst to us, an evaluation of our performance. We receive an official identity card and a downloadable application connects us to other “employees” with whom we are called upon to exchange ideas for products to launch, to build a network, and above all, to accumulate Quigital points. With these points, we can even buy promotions!
Once this intro is over, the show begins. This is a fairly playful roller coaster whose success, I am told, is due to the advice of the director and choreographer Marie-Josée Chartier. We quickly get caught up in it, so well is everything managed, and the musicians also act as more or less effective managers of the event’s progress. But the person who ensures the impeccable running and the maintenance of the breathless energy is the MC (Mistress of Ceremony), a kind of crowd animator/Club Med GO/pushy motivator of the evening: the soprano Sarah Albu. She’s the one who holds it all together, who sings, talks, encourages to the point of saturation to repeat the ridiculous mantras of this big fictional, but not so fictional, company. Here’s an example: If you’re on time, you’re late; We strive for Data Completeness!; It’s up to all of us to live and breathe the sunset-type environment; Aim to find out your Complete Edgeboard Storylines, and a bunch of other nonsense like that. We are bombarded with hollow propaganda, covered in false-good-feelings that underpin a mind-numbing productivism that seems straight out of an updated version of Orwell’s 1984.
All of this, of course, is a scathing but lucid critique of the contemporary corporate world, which seems unable to avoid the trap of its own extremist caricature leading to absurdity.
The event consists of songs that form a complete cycle (a Songbook) of six tracks, evoking conventional platitudes that one might hear or read in the usual activities of a workday:
Can You Forward This To Me?
I Hope This Email Finds You Well
Exciting News!
Just Wanted To Circle Back
You Left Something Behind
We Love You
All of this is interspersed with sometimes frenetic instrumental moments, like when the host overloads her coworkers by pushing them to always go faster. These (the guys from Architek) type faster and faster on computer “keyboards” that also serve as percussion or funny instruments like a melodica!
The great success of this show, unlike any other I have ever seen in contemporary music, is that, firstly, the staging is precise to the millimetre and timed to the millisecond. Secondly, the proposed socio-economic critique is not done in a heavy-handed or leftist preaching manner. Although the content is undeniably left-wing, the humour and ridicule present throughout serve as a lightning rod against any potential impression of militant political action. Then, thirdly, the music composed by Elliot Britton and Patrick Hart is perfectly suited to the subject matter and the flow. The Montreal composer plunges us into a tornado of sounds, notes and well-turned melodies that evoke as much the muzak of a telephone voice mail or the corporate jingle as the typical song of an American musical and, also, more contemporary instrumental episodes, but always inhabited by an irresistible propulsive energy. The simple little themes associated with Quigital’s “ads” will remind those who remember them of the stereotypical jingles from the fake commercials in films like Robocop (the original from 1987, a very dark satirical masterpiece by Paul Verhoeven) or Total Recall (also the original, with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1990, and also by Verhoeven and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick). As if the superficial and propagandist tendencies of multinationals have not changed at all… Nowadays, it even seems that a fusion movement is taking place with a certain religious fringe of society, especially in the United States.
The creators probably noted it very well, as the majority of this corporate retreat is divided into six parts associated with a ritual initially launched with the “prayer” Oh Growth, Heed My Call. The six parts follow, whose titles leave no doubt as to the religious links: Invocation, Thanksgiving, Confession, Supplicata, Intercession, Adoration. Imagine then the host who, following the dismissal of some employees, offers very superficial and useless “thoughts and prayers”!! A particularly strong moment when you know how and in what contexts they are used by our southern neighbours.
In the end, Quigital Corporate Retreat is a bold, very bold show, but one that certainly has the potential to reach a wide audience in search of a change of scenery and social critique that is as virulent as it is comical, without forcing anyone to tear their hair out trying to understand what’s going on. That is a very rare thing in contemporary so-called “avant-garde” creation.
When you burn bridges, people fly!
