By a camp on the Beach of Lake Geneva in 1816, five friends face the challenge of telling the most terrifying story. It is clear that Mary Shellley is the winner, with her warning tale (soon a novel) of a obsessed doctor who achieves his disbelieving monster challenge, then runs. So I felt fear is her Lord, O Lord, to the point that his immediate hot response – “You are hidden” – quickly turns into tremors and prayer.
“We may never be smart enough to create something that can replace us,” he says.
After only 424 years, in 2240, two of the subsequent beings of man view this short article, and the entire anthroposin, with wonder and compassion. How can people think about themselves as an end point for development, one of this inorganic intelligence asks for a communication, when humanity was clear that a “transitional type” and “luster on the schedule”?
This schedule is a fairly homogeneous structural system Jordan Harrison’s play, “Archeology”, Which opened on Tuesday in the horizons of the play. Starting with the Shellley monster (which you actually call a “computer”), well, the end of humanity, can win a frightening competition from the same floor, because it draws a possible path, via Technology, from Romantic Glory, the disappearance of species.
For non -organs in 2240, it does not praise humanity but to bury it. It is evidence of “exhibitions” in what the alternative title of the theater calls “a tour of the permanent group in the late Human Antiquities Museum.” SHELLEY is the first of 12 such exhibitions, indicating how inventions gradually outperform natural intelligence, and then, such as Frankstein’s monster, destroyed it.
Initially, the inventions seem useful, harmless, or – for us, beating in the middle of the timeline – desperately outdated. A woman in 1910 (Cindy Chiong) offers a wooden finger for a boy who was injured in a work accident. A student who taught a lot in 1978 (Ryan Spahn) explains a preliminary model of embarrassing robot that recognizes 400 English words. (The man who rushes from the student who is studying often admired.) In 1987, the mother of (Christine See), whose sad son (Julius Renezel) does not sleep to sleep on leaving one of her soaps, registered on that magic until soon -the technology due, tape Betamax Video.
Some of these scenes are beautifully drawn, with intelligence, the distinctive pace of sadness for the best Harrison works. (The chances and risks of artificial intelligence were as a human formulation subject His play “Marjorie Prime”, “ In the 2015 Politzer Final) (Father by Ibn: “Well. Goodbye, Tom. I do not expect to see you again.” We do not need to tell us what he died.
But other scenes, like one, were appointed in 2076, when the last humans live as outskirts in the hardships of ministers of almost a robot, they feel more filling materials in the place, as steps in the schedule of Harrison but they are not convincing in themselves. Others barely throw Vodville graphics that highlight a black point.
Because of this stopping time and personality – the nine actors who play 45 role – “antiquities” are not cumulative in the usual sense, as the behavior and the result are related to the limits of life, an hour, or even a moment. Instead, as soon as we care about someone, someone is avoided.
I mean by the playwright, but of course every person, in the play and so on, is ignored in a more literal sense as well. This is useful in highlighting the issue of deaths, whether on personal or geological standards, which directs you to think less about the value of life more than forms of life. The writer (Amelia Wow), who was the most shocking plays (Amelia Workman) by 2031 – may speak after only six years! – He can no longer compete in the market with artificial intelligence
“If they can do everything that makes me IShe asks, “Then what is the benefit of me?”
Although this character disappears from the story after a moment, Harrison did not leave his play without anything to carry it together. When the characters are transient, ideas and images are repeated, often over long periods. Many scenes are associated with signals to those previous, such as structural Easter eggs. We meet Percy Shellley – Mary’s husband – in this first scene by the camp fire; In the second, about a century after a century, we hear a woman struggling to read. “A poem for Western winds“AI is planted, which is considered one letter planted in 2032 in everyone by 2076.
Logic, then, is less narrative than poetic – or to put it in another way, it is a program and not devices. If this is a bold option, it is a third of the two -thirds of the road in 95 minutes. As the schedule reaches its apparent end, our evidence provides a special exhibition, unlike others.
This is a group of human technology, which was revealed in a scene indicating how future organisms, such as excavation scientists who deduce huge dinosaurs of small bones, make a lot of mistake. Despite all their mental power, they misunderstand the Bart shampoo as a gaseous drink, and the clinics as medical tools, and adopted as a kind of treasure that requires cooling.
Busy moments like this, Farhan and Scalling, the distinctive feature not only for Harrison but also to David Kromer, who directed “antiquities” with Caitlin Sullivan. Everything is completely judged to achieve maximum effect without exaggeration: non -shiny metal panels (groups of Paul Steinberg), lighting the museum’s condition (by Micoleau), fashion determined by social (by Brenda Abbandandolo), The Creeipy Sound (by Christopher Darbassie), especially pillars (by Matt Carlin).
Despite the minimum minimum, and always taste restrictions, it seems that it is all one million dollars-and this may be the reason that the play is a three-way joint production, with a theatrical book and the Vineyard theater in New York and the goodman theater in Chicago.
But not to go so much, “effects” may not go far. The last third of it, which will not spoil it, reviews our point of view of the timeline intelligently, but strains to justify itself. To the extent that it occurs, in the old way that the rest of the play mixes often: by trying to involve us with humans as living and meaningful individuals, not just embarrassing to intelligence intelligence.
In this process, Harrison’s play appears to be equal to the natural desire to survive, feel and material – to discover, enjoy, enjoy and create – with a kind of arrogance that, such as global warming, will inevitably lead to extinction. Was the blame on Betamax? Was the vision of Mary Shelly? “Antiquities” are in the end a lower memorial than the Queen of Ethics Competition. This may not be wrong but only half of the story.
Antiquities
Until February 23 in the theatrical horizons, Manhattan; PlaywrightShorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.
