Sorry this is late.

I have 2 story sketches. Both I am not super happy with.

Story Sketch 1
# Elevator Pitch
2 Friends are playing with a ball, which gets lost over a fence. They must use teamwork in order to get the toy back.

# Relationships
– One mobile wheeled robot, (perhaps a modified remote controlled vehicle, newly skinned), another larger arm swinging/sweeping robot. They are friends, and have a positive relationship with each other.
– In the world, they are rambunctious kids
– They are afraid of authority figures, external threats, and more. They are afraid of doing something wrong, and getting in trouble.
– The audience should empathize with the machines.
– The robots try to impress each other, they want the other robot to like them.
# Story beats
– The robots play.
– The ball is lost.
– The robots are lost.
– Robot 1 tries to get the ball back.
– Robot 2 tries to get the ball back.
– They are dejected, and defeated.
– They are about to give up.
– They discover that they can work together (in a non-obvious way)
– Something only possible with robots, which creates a comedic beat. Like they take themselves apart and put themselves back together; or a power line that holds them back, one unplugs it and moves it to a different outlet, and now they can reach. Up to this point in the story, the robots have behaved like human actors; so the audience expects this as the reality; but the ‘twist’ so to speak, the discovery, as that the robots are well aware they are robots and we leverage that to create an unexpected turn which allows for the recovery of the object.
– They get it back and are happy.
– Hooray friendship

# Notes On Realization
– The point of the story is to begin as if we are doing a story with robots merely working as human actors, and then during the critical turn, the robots leave this ‘reality domain’ that the audience assumed, embrace their mechanical nature to some degree, and then they can achieve success. So while the simple morality play is about ‘we need friendship’, that’s just scaffolding. The play is about the robots needing to BE robots, not human actors or puppets, in order to realize their goals.

Basically, if we can’t defeat cliche’s or obvious choices, then leverage the audiences expectations.

Some ideas for that turn:
early in the play something goes wrong, we break the 4th wall and a human intervenes and fixes things. Later, the robots ‘call’ for the human again, to help them. We go from play-space to room-space comedically.
One robot wants to unplug the other robot (who is not a fan of the idea) so that the giant extension cable stops limiting their movements.
The robots deconstruct and rebuild themselves (“quote unquote”).
The robots build a new robot, they deconstruct the set, or something else visually extreme.

I hope to come up with something better. Eck.

# Evaluation
The underlying premise is to leverage and then circumvent an audiences expectations about what they think robot performers will be. We give them the obvious answer to “robot play” and then we change it DURING the play, and as a PART of the play/plot. The traditional plot is completed, but in such a way as to get the audience to be forced to reconsider the assumption about what robots in theater can do.

The “friends lose a ball” script is, well, bad. I’m not happy with it. I imagine it as being interestingly challenging (and thus impressive to an audience) in mechanics, and immediately readable by an audience. Clear goal, clear problem, etc.

The play will be a success if the audience leaves with their mind turning about what robot theater can be. I am worried that it will play as a gimmick or joke (which it sort of should be; funny that is) and the audience will go ‘ah, they left the space and came back’ and not ‘ah, they could do that the whole time.’ It is still up to task to identify the core ‘Theater space’ assumptions we want to question, and what ‘other space’ we want to enter.

Story Sketch for RCP 2

# Elevator Pitch
A street-performer robot interacts with a crowd, trying to get tips for it’s hat.

# Relationships
The robot actually reads the audience
– It knows when it’s been given money
– It knows if the audience is engaged
– It knows if someone is leaving
– It knows how many audiences there are.

# Story Beats
The robot is able to perform ‘tricks’. Not, like, juggling; but robot things. We build a robot that does a little dance, is what I am imagining.

As audiences come and go, it calls to them (yells at them, pneumaticaly), it gets upset and childish and emotional. It does not have a face (to easy!) but it’s mannerisms should reflect that. Nobody around? It stops and stoops, dejected. One person walks in and that person gets all of the attention. It wasn’t to please them, “looks” right at them, etc. As more guests arrive it gets more energy. If the guests arn’t paying attention it will be louder and more annoying, if they are, it will do a nice formal – non-noisy/chaotic dance.

# Notes On Realization
– Computer Vision. Woo.
– We don’t need much robot to express much
– Interesting if the robot is disconnected/apart. Like it has a “hand” that shakes a tip hat, and that’s just on the floor. The main dancing body, perhaps it spins around a light or something else; separated from one single ‘actor’.
– How little gesture/posture/movement do we need to express this robot’s emotions?