BEFORE THERE WAS AI, THERE WERE THE LUDDITES. HISTORY'S FIRST TECH BACKLASH COMES TO HOLLYWOOD FRINGE
We Are All Burning
LOS ANGELES, CA — In 1812, thousands of English workers took up hammers and marched into the night to destroy the machines they believed were stealing their futures.
More than two hundred years later, as artificial intelligence reshapes industries around the world, their story feels eerily familiar.
We Are All Burning, a new play by Los Angeles native Travers Tobis, comes to the Hollywood Fringe Festival this June with a timely question:
What happens when progress leaves people behind?
Set during the height of the Luddite uprising, the play follows a group of young men returning home from war to find their jobs disappearing, their community unraveling, and the rules of their world changing faster than they can understand. As tensions rise, they are driven into an escalating conflict with the town they once called home, forcing them to choose between submission, resistance, and survival.
Far from the caricature history remembers, the Luddites were not anti-technology zealots. They were workers confronting a world transformed overnight without their consent—a struggle that echoes today’s debates surrounding automation, artificial intelligence, and economic displacement.
“We like to think technological progress is inevitable and always beneficial,” says Tobis. “But the Luddites were some of the first people forced to ask whether the future being built had room for them in it. That’s a question we’re still asking today.”
Combining historical drama with contemporary relevance, We Are All Burning invites audiences to step inside the first moment the future threatened the past—a moment when ordinary people were forced to decide how much they were willing to sacrifice to stop it.
Performance Information
Hollywood Fringe Festival 2026
June 15–21, 2026
Tickets: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/13672?tab=details
Instagram: @weareallburningplay
About the Production
We Are All Burning is an original play developed for the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Inspired by true events, the production explores technology, labor, community, and resistance through the lens of one of history’s most misunderstood movements.
About the Playwright
Travers Tobis is a Los Angeles-based writer and actor. We Are All Burning was developed in his time at UCSB out of a fascination with the Luddite movement and the questions it raises about technological progress, labor, and the cost of building the future.
For interviews, review requests, or additional information:
Travers Tobis
[email protected]
310-844-5641
