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Published on 7/23/08
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As you enter the Ontological Theater for 31 Down’s retro-techy audio freakout Universal Robots, be careful picking a chair: You may plop yourself in the lap of a polite naked gentleman sitting in the audience. He’s Josef Capek (Thom Sibbitt), brother and soulmate to Karel (Justin Tolley), the Czech novelist and playwright who introduced the concept of robots in 1921. Later, Karel would explain that Josef actually invented the term, derived from the Slavic robota, meaning forced labor. Why Josef is nude and in the bleachers becomes clear later in the play. Sorta. The brothers, whose lives were cut short by the Nazis, are the twin focus of this abstract experiment in audio-imagistic theater.
Director Shannon Sindelar, who wrote the script with Ryan Holsapple, draws upon Karel’s diverse writings, which cover everything from European geopolitics to gardening, and quotes from his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) to create a rich, spooky tapestry of radio transmissions, voiceovers (as if we’re hearing thoughts) and assorted sonic arcana. Over this flow of sound she stages her actors in slow, eerie tableaux, touching obliquely on themes of nature versus machine, animals versus objects and reproduction versus mass production. Jonathan Valuckas makes a brief, creepy appearance as Domin, the manager of a robotics factory who drools over Helena (Kelly Tuohy). Fittingly, you don’t know whether he lusts after her young flesh or the facsimile he could make thereof.
