Theatre for a New Audience and Rattlestick We Are Your Robots

If you think you’d like to digest your Noam Chomsky with a side of sultry sax, We Are Your Robots is right up your alley.

As you wait for the curtain, gurgling electronic sounds mix in with the audience chatter. A square robot head colored in a turquoise-hue gives the set a quaint mid-century feel at odds with the pre-show publicity suggesting we are in for a deep dive into the much ballyhooed AI.

Texts like short responses to prompts float in front of us— feeling more human than robot as they wax in anxiety…

…Where are we?…

…Do I pee again?…

…So screwed….Move to Norway….

Setting the tone quite literally, the four performers stride in from behind a silver tinsel curtain bathing us in their golden chords and singing We Are Your Robots. They are dressed in light blue suits that the Temptations might have worn back in the day, but with a metallic veneer plastic trim suggesting circuitry.

WE ARE YOUR ROBOTS Takes Aim at our Humanity, or Lack Thereof

The conceit of the play is that the four musician/actors are androids here to help us figure out what we want from them. The monologue by composer/lyricist Ethan Lipton is heavily spiced with music breakouts in multiple genres—- rock, folk, country, alternative. The sounds — voice and instruments all—-are mellifluous. Indeed, we could be in a group therapy session!

Though his voice is ever soothing, Lipton’s libretto more or less says, Hey, if you think AI is so bad perhaps you should take a look in the mirror? To present this thesis, Lipton marshals quotes from the likes of Noam Chomsky about human destructiveness, Turing Award-winner Donald Knuth, and lots of wisdom culled from deep dives into Wikipedia and YouTube. You too may find yourself astonished and marveling at how a musical is teaching an intro philosophy course while it’s keeping us entertained. This writer walked away with love for a new word — qualia, for example. Though by definition, you might not find it a word worthy of your adoration. (Look it up!)

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A spirit of playfulness permeates the theater. Lipton sings a translation of a whale song to teach us about GIS and mapping. We meet his grandpa —who looks a lot like your Roomba but with a MIDI-mimicking voice—and watch Lipton chase him to the stage’s corners. SPOILER ALERT!— we even get to watch an overhead screen morph Lipton into a bat, as AI flexes its muscles.

In this reviewer’s opinion, the caliber of the composer/musicians especially goes a long way to make We Are Your Robots so enjoyable. Oh that sax! Play it again, Android!

We Are Your Robots is above all a unique theater experience.