“Robot”: from robota, Czech for “forced labor,” coined in 1920 in Karel Čapek’s play Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots), meaning not machines made of metal, gears, wheels, and bolts, but artificial life forms of manmade flesh and blood, indistinguishable from us though of alternative origin, usage, and intention. But the idea of inventions that assist and annihilate dates back millennia, mythically and metaphorically to Promethean fire—surely more ancient still our fear and fascination with what human hands can build or break.
I Build Giants Through 5/8: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Mon 5/2, 8 PM; The Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa, theplagiarists.org, pay what you can ($15 suggested).
I Build Giants, written by Ryan Stevens, directed by Christina Casano, with movement and intimacy direction by Maureen Yasko, reimagines the problem with stunning force in an epic poetic feminist science-fiction allegory with the Plagiarists. The Engineer (Song Marshall) invents “Gossamer”: modeled on her own body, it merges human with machine on a gargantuan scale, capable of discovery and humanitarian maneuvers, piloted by an Astronaut (Nicolette de Guia), who serves as the “seam” between skin and steel. No creation emerges without exploitation, unanticipated consequences, and destruction—how the world welcomes Gossamer is not in the Engineer’s hands alone. Down descends an oily Executive (Carina Lastimosa), determined to co-opt the situation for cash and conquest. Drawn in is a Technician (Madison Hill), whose distrust of institutions drives them underground for experiments executed upon a willing Volunteer (Julia Stemper), whose body becomes a territory for further dispute. And up comes an Ace (Lexy Hope Weixel), a child, a killing machine. What unfolds never lets us forget that most mortal material, ourselves.
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