Last summer, the Sideshow Theatre Company approached Chibots about a play called Heddatron. The robot hobbyist group Chibots invited the play’s director to present the project at a Chibots meeting; and some members got interested in the project.
Sideshow Theatre Company’s requested robotics specialists from across Chicago have helped prepare to present a cast of robots, with actors, in the February premiere of Elizabeth Meriwether’s comedy, Heddatron. Johnathan L. Green will direct the play.
After a book falls from the sky, Jane Gordon, a depressed and pregnant Michigan housewife in a loveless marriage, finds herself kidnapped by a clan of renegade sentient robots. She is whisked away to the jungles of South America where she’s forced to perform the title role in a mechanical version of Hedda Gabler. As a documentarian searches for the truth about Jane’s abduction and Jane’s family mounts a search party, her 10-year-old daughter, Nugget, unearths a past where a tormented Henrik Ibsen squeezes out each tortured word of his greatest masterpiece.
Chibots members, and others in the area, have been “charged” with the task of designing the mechanisms for the robot-actors, and prototypes to demonstrate the technology to be used. The club members have been hard at work creating, discussing, and revising designs and electronics for the robotic Heddatron players. The Sideshow Theatre will design the artistic body shell for the finished robots.
At a recent Chibots meeting, Eddy Wright, of Wright Hobbies in Bolingbrook, gave a presentation for his newly built Operator Control Panel (OCP)—one of the most important devices for the robots’ movements for making Heddatron a success. Wright also presented a prototype of a Remote Control Robot Base. Chibots members Stuart H., Don K., and Terry J. have also contributed to designs and functions.
The Heddatron bots will be paramount in increasing social dilemmas between themselves and the live players. Humans will in fact, share the stage, as the chasm between human and robot emotions and actions converge. The five robotic “players” are named Hans, Aunt Julie, Judge Brack, Billy and Berta. The social interaction between people and the robots in the play is at the heart of what the robotics participants and the Sideshow Theatre want to achieve.
“By introducing robotics to people (through Heddatron) we are helping them realize that robots are not the creations that are seen in film, rather they are devices that can easily interact with people,” says Salvador Garica, president of the contributing Chibots club.
He added that aside from the technical issues involved, the need to help the human actor transition from acting with other people to acting with robots is involved. The process includes “scientific” method acting, tackling various social issues—but perhaps the most challenging being the awkwardness actors can feel when “talking” to a machine instead of another human being.
Heddatron will run from Feb.11 through April 24 at the Steppenwolf Garage on North Halsted Street. The play is part of the 2nd annual Steppenwolf GARAGE REP.