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| "R.U.R." is a relatively little-known play, which is surprising due to its historical weight: this play actually coined the term "robot". Scripted in the 1920's by Czech playwright Karel Capek, "R.U.R." is about a group of men on an island who work in different capacities for Rossum's Universal Robots (or R.U.R., for short). A beautiful woman, Helena Glory, comes to visit the island to protest their manufacture of artificial people (she claims that they have "souls" and should be allowed to live like actual people), and the general manager Domin immediately falls in love with her. Before their meeting is up, he has proposed. As the play progresses, we see that some robots have developed what the men refer to as "robot spasm", but what Helena believes is their souls, struggling to break free. Unfortunately, some semblance of a soul does break free, when the robots revolt and begin to take over the planet. |
| Our production of "R.U.R." was a bit different than Capek's original intentions. Rather than casting within the confines of the author's gender roles, the director, Anika Alvar, chose to take a chance and do a gender reversal of most of the roles in the play, namely the main ones, taking it from a show with 3 women and 14 men to 7 women and 6 men. Not only did this create more equality in casting, but it also gave new meanings to the play. Though the play holds strong innuendos towards communism and slavery, the gender reversal included questions about woman's role in past society. What would have happened if, instead of men, women had held the upper hand in the workplace? If men were kept in the dark about secrets and women instead had to fight for the good of humankind? I believe that Alvar's casting took what was already a good script and made it a phenomenal show. |
| Genre: Science Fiction\Melodrama Stage: Berea College Theatre Laboratory Director: Anika Alvar |