Robot Vs Art
Fri, 17 May 2013, 01:19 pmGordon the Optom1 post in thread
Robot Vs Art
Fri, 17 May 2013, 01:19 pm‘Robots Vs Art’ was written by the inexhaustible Perth actor and WAAPA graduate, Travis Cotton. This hilarious play was nominated as one of the best plays of 2012. After an Equity Award for Best Newcomer, Travis went on to win many more awards with his plays and TV scripts, and has never looked back since. Multi-talented, Travis then co-wrote the musical ‘Blasted Earth’ with Tim Minchin and Toby Schmitz.
This strange but novel play is presented by ‘thatsanono’ at the Blue Room Studio in The Blue Room complex, Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge. With performances presented from Tuesday to Saturday until Saturday 1st June, all starting at 8.30 pm.
It is a short time in the future and we find ourselves in a room with black walls and white floor. There are a few large white oblong boxes, and the rear wall is a large projection screen.
A side door flies open and a smartly dressed man enters. He explains that he is Executive Producer Master Bot (Sean Walsh), that after years of being ruled by humans, his robot nation has now learned enough to take over the world. They are now the Master Race and humans can be eliminated from the equation.
Dragged into the room by a robot in a brown mackintosh coat, Soldier Bot (Ben Mortley) is a miserable looking human, this is Giles (Damon Lockwood) released from the mineral mines at Master Bot’s request. Giles has just seen his entire family and thousands of other workers deliberately massacred, the rest have been sent to the mines. It appears that he could be the only human left on the planet.
It transpires that Master Bot has written a play ‘I, Zinc’ all about the minerals that keep his robots functioning. However, being void of any emotion he cannot appreciate the finer points of the quality writing and advanced theatre skills. He demands that Giles, who was a stage director before the revolution, produces and directs his 104-page play that evening – or Giles will die! The robot’s hardware allows the script to be downloaded in a few seconds, as long as there is no glitch.
Giles feels like Pyramus and Thisbe, putting on their play with schoolchildren. Giles must try to get his automatons to act at the proper pace, deliver lines correctly and to avoid interpreting every instruction literally. Master Bot has chosen the cast, a robot with jerky movements and large hands called Claw Bot (Ben Mortley) and a beautiful female robot, German Integrator Bot (Renée Newman).
Will Giles be able to put on the play and save his skin?
This is an exceptionally well-constructed and ingeniously written play. The robots speak in rich text straight from the dictionary, often quoting literal definitions and delivering in a didactic manner. There is a huge amount of very clever humour, mainly in-jokes relating to the theatre and play production, but even so I am sure that the average Mr and Mrs Public will understand and appreciate most of the comedy.
There are loquacious passages relating to the new society, some quite garrulous that caused my attention to drift, but rapidly we would be back the play production and the whole act would pick up.
It is a polished and compelling comedy, superbly acted by an all-star cast. Damon Lockwood is renowned for his jesting, but he has also been nominated a couple of times for his serious acting. Here he plays a panic-stricken captive, bungling his way through the robot’s inane script. There were several occasions where Damon threw in some comedy of his own, often in an attempt to break down the other robots pan faces.
Sean Walsh, who is possibly best known for his wonderful depiction of Alan Bond in ‘Taking Liberty’, is amazing as the robot in a suit. However, when the robot changes into a Quentin Crisp-like theatre director the laughs doubled. Ben Mortley is a NIDA graduate who has appeared in several major TV and movie productions. His advanced theatre skills were apparent, from his amazing robotic movements to his hilarious stunted acting.
Renée Newman is a talented actor, and one of the few with a PhD. Renée, who is now a researcher has several awards for her Fringe scripts. This is a top-quality production from a talented team. The director is award winning, NIDA graduate and university lecturer, Phil Miolin. Phil has filled the production with humour. The sound and lighting design was by local genius, Joe Lui and operated by stage manager Jennifer Friend. There was a clever interactive piece of acting with Tim Barretto’s AV design.
Very well acted by an outstanding cast building on an original premise by a highly gifted writer. The result is very funny, with an abundance of witticisms and yet sadly, there are short patches when something was lacking for me – but I don’t know what, perhaps the script was too complex or richly written.
The majority of the audience were in stitches, so go along and see something completely new.
‘Robots Vs Art’ was written by the inexhaustible Perth actor and WAAPA graduate, Travis Cotton. This hilarious play was nominated as one of the best plays of 2012. After an Equity Award for Best Newcomer, Travis went on to win many more awards with his plays and TV scripts, and has never looked back since. Multi-talented, Travis then co-wrote the musical ‘Blasted Earth’ with Tim Minchin and Toby Schmitz.
This strange but novel play is presented by ‘thatsanono’ at the Blue Room Studio in The Blue Room complex, Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge. With performances presented from Tuesday to Saturday until Saturday 1st June, all starting at 8.30 pm.
It is a short time in the future and we find ourselves in a room with black walls and white floor. There are a few large white oblong boxes, and the rear wall is a large projection screen.
A side door flies open and a smartly dressed man enters. He explains that he is Executive Producer Master Bot (Sean Walsh), that after years of being ruled by humans, his robot nation has now learned enough to take over the world. They are now the Master Race and humans can be eliminated from the equation.
Dragged into the room by a robot in a brown mackintosh coat, Soldier Bot (Ben Mortley) is a miserable looking human, this is Giles (Damon Lockwood) released from the mineral mines at Master Bot’s request. Giles has just seen his entire family and thousands of other workers deliberately massacred, the rest have been sent to the mines. It appears that he could be the only human left on the planet.
It transpires that Master Bot has written a play ‘I, Zinc’ all about the minerals that keep his robots functioning. However, being void of any emotion he cannot appreciate the finer points of the quality writing and advanced theatre skills. He demands that Giles, who was a stage director before the revolution, produces and directs his 104-page play that evening – or Giles will die! The robot’s hardware allows the script to be downloaded in a few seconds, as long as there is no glitch.
Giles feels like Pyramus and Thisbe, putting on their play with schoolchildren. Giles must try to get his automatons to act at the proper pace, deliver lines correctly and to avoid interpreting every instruction literally. Master Bot has chosen the cast, a robot with jerky movements and large hands called Claw Bot (Ben Mortley) and a beautiful female robot, German Integrator Bot (Renée Newman).
Will Giles be able to put on the play and save his skin?
This is an exceptionally well-constructed and ingeniously written play. The robots speak in rich text straight from the dictionary, often quoting literal definitions and delivering in a didactic manner. There is a huge amount of very clever humour, mainly in-jokes relating to the theatre and play production, but even so I am sure that the average Mr and Mrs Public will understand and appreciate most of the comedy.
There are loquacious passages relating to the new society, some quite garrulous that caused my attention to drift, but rapidly we would be back the play production and the whole act would pick up.
It is a polished and compelling comedy, superbly acted by an all-star cast. Damon Lockwood is renowned for his jesting, but he has also been nominated a couple of times for his serious acting. Here he plays a panic-stricken captive, bungling his way through the robot’s inane script. There were several occasions where Damon threw in some comedy of his own, often in an attempt to break down the other robots pan faces.
Sean Walsh, who is possibly best known for his wonderful depiction of Alan Bond in ‘Taking Liberty’, is amazing as the robot in a suit. However, when the robot changes into a Quentin Crisp-like theatre director the laughs doubled. Ben Mortley is a NIDA graduate who has appeared in several major TV and movie productions. His advanced theatre skills were apparent, from his amazing robotic movements to his hilarious stunted acting.
Renée Newman is a talented actor, and one of the few with a PhD. Renée, who is now a researcher has several awards for her Fringe scripts. This is a top-quality production from a talented team. The director is award winning, NIDA graduate and university lecturer, Phil Miolin. Phil has filled the production with humour. The sound and lighting design was by local genius, Joe Lui and operated by stage manager Jennifer Friend. There was a clever interactive piece of acting with Tim Barretto’s AV design.
Very well acted by an outstanding cast building on an original premise by a highly gifted writer. The result is very funny, with an abundance of witticisms and yet sadly, there are short patches when something was lacking for me – but I don’t know what, perhaps the script was too complex or richly written.
The majority of the audience were in stitches, so go along and see something completely new.