Heddatron
February 2006: HERE Arts Center
Les Freres Corbusier finally transforms Ibsen's classic into something truly well-made: a robot.
Half a dozen of them. Live onstage. Really.
Les Freres continues its irreverent massacre of historical icons and academic esoterica by taking on famed playwright Henrik Ibsen, the well-made play, and contemporary issues in robotics. Ibsen is thwarted by August Strindberg, and his kitchen slut throughout his fevered struggle to write the great feminist drama, Hedda Gabler, while a contemporary housewife in Michigan is abducted by robots and forced to perform Ibsen’s masterpieces over and over again...
With real functioning robots portraying half of the parts, alongside humans who will play the other half, Heddatron was the first theatrical production to use functional robots as actors. Employing robotic automation and text-to-speech software, humans will perform opposite a hunky Lovborg-bot, a clunky Tessman-bot, as well as blinking, smoking, and whirring co-stars who portray Judge Brack, Aunt Julie, and the rest of Ibsen's menagerie.
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Alex Timbers
Aaron Lemon-Strauss
Anne Davison
Cameron Anderson
Tyler Micoleau
Jenny Mannis
Jacob Pinholster
Bart Fasbender
Meredith Finkelstein & Cindy Jeffers
Stephanie Wiesner
Mike Solomon
Kat West
Alaina Taylor
Betty Hong Yiu Tung
Stephanie Klapper
Richard Kornberg and Associates
Cast:Carolyn Baeumler, Sam Forman, Gibson Frazier, Ryan Karels, Daniel Larlham, Julie Lake, Nina Hellman, Spenser Leigh, Michael Schulman, Ian Unterman. With Jeremy Shamos appearing by video
For more information: www.lesfreres.org/heddatron
New York Times| Feature Article
The New York Times profiles The Botmatrix, the engineering geniuses behind the robots of Heddatron.
Wired Magazine| Feature Article
"Elizabeth Meriwether's strange script cuts to the heart of Ibsen's story: A woman chained up in her own life struggles to break free of social programming. That struggle is mirrored by the robots, who attempt to escape their own programming and achieve true AI – self-awareness. Just as Hedda rails against a world that can't hear her, the robots represent potential that one day may be unleashed..."
National Public Radio| Feature Article
"Heddatron is a comedy, albeit a brainy, high-browed one..."
New York Times
"Strangely moving... The wild side of theater where audiences' hearts are mended by the ritualistic breaking of them on stage... Achieves true, and truly original, theatrical transcendence... Magical... Brings to mind the heady fall down the rabbit hole that begins Alice's adventures in Wonderland... What could have been merely a novelty stunt, or a facile comment on sensitive souls in a dehumanized world, becomes an exultant celebration of the cathartic powers of theater."
Variety
"Zany... Inspired... Five of the cutest robots that ever rolled off an engineering ramp interact smartly with human actors in this cheeky sendup of Ibsen and the precepts of the well-made play."
New York Sun
"Go-for-broke energy and inllectual gluttony... The latest genre-defying head-trip by the dependably bratty Les Freres Corbusier."
USA Today
"An Irreverant Romp!"
Time Out New York
"Triumphantly goofy... Hilarious coup-de-theatre!"
Broadway.com
"Packed with intelligence and wit... Take a friend, have some drinks beforehand and enjoy."