Food for Thought…

We’ve been going back and forth about doing BBM with robots. It’s raises all sorts of questions. Here are a few of the musings between a playwright and a dramaturg (we’re the human version of these, by the way, also the producers)

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Hey …

A bunch of interesting questions about the Bright Beach Memoirs workshop. If you know the answers, much obliged! If not, no problem, I will research:

• How do I find out what Actor’s Equity designation to use (in the casting notice, etc.) I were using non-union actors in NY, would I have to apply for a special contract, or just say it is nonunion?
• Also, how do I get a Samuel French script? Just go somewhere and pick it up? Should I get four of them? One for each character / robot? How much freedom do I have to change the script? Are there rules / laws about this?

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Well, I don’t know. Excellent questions!

We can try sculpting something that looks like one of the characters. But it will never be perfect, and would in the end serve to highlight how much it DOESN’T look like them, or move like them, etc. Although that might be interesting. Perhaps one robot attempts to be human and the others don’t.

Thanks …

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Hi:

I’ll stop by the library later today and pick up a copy. Perhaps we can frame some of this discussion around trying to pick a scene…i mean, just trying to answer the question of how to audition robots for - oh, girl who wants to go to broadway or two brothers or worried mother. Raises all kinds of thoughts. Race? Gender? Age? Accent? how much of this is relevant for robots. Especially small ones. That I assume don’t look like humans. Or do they? should they? What are our expectations about that?

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See, you should post those nutritional ruminations on dpi!

Are you registered? I think you can do it at any time.

Oh dramaturg …

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Ah - the beginning of questions! like, what makes a character a character - gender, voice, clothes, etc?

As to your second point - remember the Beckett/Akalaitis controversey about End Game? Does that controversy go away when the actors aren’t human? Does that remove the union problem. And indeed, even more overarching - can you really call a robot an actor? What differentiates them from puppets. Aren’t they preprogrammed puppets.