Zach

Intention

The question that defines a character’s actions in the theater can be summarized as what does the character want? In fact, in the rhetoric of some significant schools of acting, focus is frequently on a character’s intention: a word which has real depth of meaning in the theater and can have significant and complicated extensions, but which fundamentally just refers to the character’s volition.

In this rubric, the successful actor, then, is one who first interprets and then communicates their character’s inner desires to the audience. The transmitted desires drive the character’s decisions and give them depth and life. The ways that this communication is done are, of course, myriad and complex, and really form the center of what it means to act—perhaps by embodying the outer form of the character and carefully embracing the character’s every physical, vocal, and visible quirk the actor can better approach the role and come to really embody the part. (This approach is typical of some British schools of acting.)

Alternatively, an actor may begin from the “inside” and move “out” from there: working hard first to deeply understand the emotional/intellectual/internal life of the character and relating it to their own life experiences so as to best align their own emotional desires on stage with the character’s in that moment, and allow their physical embodiment to follow.

Proposal

An acting robot must have the ability to act: it must have some sort of agency. This cannot be actually embedded in the robot itself, of course—that would require a self-aware machine. But we can approximate this through a bit of sleight of hand by using the robot as an un-announced puppet for the audience, or a particular member or members of the audience.

The piece will situate a robot with some fairly obvious physical abilities and inabilities in a setting which allows it to express an intention or volition. It wants to drink from a glass of water, or pick up a pencil and scrawl some marks, or cross the stage towards the light on the far side.

The success or failure of the robot, and in fact its behavior, will depend to some extent on live input from members of the audience who are hopefully following its actions with projected empathy. Perhaps by watching their heart rate, or their facial expressions, or body language, the robot will have less or more success in its quest, which of course will trigger a different audience response and create a rich live feedback loop.

We don’t know if the robot will succeed or not, and the audience doesn’t know that its volition for the robot is actually becoming transmuted live into the robot’s behavior in some way. It is an unannounced improvisation.

Measures

The piece is successful if:

1. The audience does not know they are being measured
2. The robot’s behaviors are actively affected live by the audience’s behaviors
3. There is an actual possibility of success or failure
4. The audience finds itself emotionally relating to the action on stage, and rooting for the robot.