Enclosure is coming this year, in late 2114. Are you and your loved ones prepared? PSTU 3 has all the latest news and coverage on pre-Enclosure events. Stay tuned here for important news as it happens. [more info]
(New York). The audience packing the Hirschfeld had its requisite Tony element, arriving in black tie, and stepping from smoothly-gliding limousines. But there were enough nerds in the audience looking uncomfortable out of their lab coats to indicate this was no ordinary performance. Both groups sat on the edges of their seats to watch the first all-robot cast perform Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Reviews were mixed. The Times had two correspondents on hand; regular theater critic Melody Chalmers was joined by technologist Anders Van Hoot. Chalmers walked away cold, if impressed by the technology on display. “I will say this,” she commented drolly, “it was the first time I’ve seen an entire cast get all the words right.” But that was also the problem. Chalmers’ famously elegant lips curled when asked to judge the acting. “Stiff.”
Van Hoot was altogether impressed. “I suppose if you compare the robots to the most emotive human performers, they may have seemed … precise. But someone walking in off the street would never have known they were robots. A spectacular technical accomplishment.”
Well, maybe. The robots were, of course, not particularly convincing to the eye. Their glossy skin looked smoother than any baby’s, and a touch too lifelike. Their eyes were perhaps too big, or maybe it was just the lack of a soul behind them. Some of the theater-goers described them as “cold,” or “spooky.”
In another first, there was no director. Instead, Robotics TCI, manufacturers of the cast, prepared the performance in their laboratories in Newark. They recreated the stage and a team of programmers set about the task of making the “actors” move naturally and say their lines properly. A beaming Louisa Ruiz, the firm’s CEO and listed “creative engineer,” agreed with Van Hoot. “Spectacular.” Of course, there were no opening-night jitters for Ruiz. “They’re robots; we knew exactly what was going to happen.”
The show is sold out through March.
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