The robots are coming back: after sold-out shows in 2022 & 2023, gamut inc is bringing its robot opera R.U.R. – Rossum’s Universal Robots back to the Theater im Delphi Berlin.
A blueprint for a number of 20th century science fictions and the origin of the term robot: Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. is one of the first literary texts to deal with the extinction of humanity. It still reflects current topics such as economic and ecological catastrophes as well as human hybris.
A century after the premiere, gamut inc / Marion Wörle and Maciej Śledziecki (composition+staging), Gerog A. Bochow (countertenor), Gina May Walter (soprano), Ruben Reniers (dancer+choreographer), Patric Schott (actor), the RIAS Chamber (choir of the humans and the robots) and German Book Prize-winning librettist Frank Witzel are bringing an updated version to the stage as music theater.
Čapek’s brother created the neologism “robot” for the work. The famous science fiction author Isaac Asimov called “R.U.R.” the “worst important play of its time”. The new version transforms the themes of the original into a grotesque world in which intermediate beings made up of people and objects move through live electronic soundscapes, complex light choreographies and optical illusions. They are incessantly pursued by the mass of people and robots, which the RIAS Kammerchor brings to life as video projections in Orson Welles’ film noir aesthetic.
“We are starting in the middle of the deepest philosophical discourse on the ethics of creation. (…) And then there’s another layer: recordings of the RIAS Chamber Choir are repeatedly switched on, speaking in sepia colors as if from the past, summarizing themes, spinning them further. And there is also the acoustic level, the great vocal arrangements, the interplay of cool, harsh robot countertenor and warm choral sound, which helps you to cling on when you fall out of the discourse, and it is worth sticking with it, because such an offer of an artistic space of experience and thought about one’s own will to creative power and the subsequent powerlessness in the face of the machines, that is and will remain important in the future!” — rbb Kultur
gamut inc‘s robot opera R.U.R. — Rossum‘s Universal Robots
2—4.5.2024
Theater im Delphi | Gustav-Adolf-Straße 2 in 13086 Berlin
