Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Exploring our humanity through speculative science: Michel van den Aa’s UPLOAD & Sam Chanse’s WHAT YOU ARE NOW

• By drediman
• March 29, 2022
• No Comments

We live in rapidly changing times in which technological and scientific advances are threatening to outpace our ability to fully assess how they fundamentally alter the human experience. Recently, I had a chance to take in a pair of shows that explore our humanism vis-à-vis speculative science and technology – before they actually become our reality.

UPLOAD
Park Avenue Armory
Through March 30

Last night, I attended a performance of Upload (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), Michel van der Aa’s multimedia opera/film/theater hybrid currently concluding a short run at the Park Avenue Armory. The Armory commission tells the story of a clinically depressed man (a recent widower) who chooses to upload his consciousness to a sort of cloud as a means of deadening the psychological turmoil within him while continuing to “live” on. When the upload procedure – which is still in its prototype phase and requires participants to depart from their corporal bodies – doesn’t go as planned, the consequences of his risky decision fall squarely upon his daughter. American soprano Julia Bullock and British baritone Roderick Williams play the daughter and father, respectively, and they dig into the roles with wrenching emotional clarity, all the while expertly calibrating their rich operatic voices to the more intimate demands of amplified music. Van der Aa’s seamless, masterfully orchestrated production is a striking technological and immersive achievement that’s, thankfully, first and foremost grounded in humanism and the dramatic narrative at hand. Although the piece runs less than 90 minutes, it packs in quite a lot, thanks to its ability to employ efficient, artful cinematic editing. At the same time, its operatic scoring for acoustic and electronic instrumentation (in turn tense and lyrical, as needed) also allows for moments in time – and all the emotions and revelations therein – to expand in ways that only music can allow. Upload also never forces its speculative musings, relying on the drama of its turbulent central father/daughter relationship to drive its probing inquiries regarding the boundaries of human existence (e.g., questions of identity vis-à-vis the body, mind, and technology).

WHAT YOU ARE NOW
Ensemble Studio Theatre
Through April 3

Then we have Sam Chanse’s new play what you are now (RECOMMENDED), which is currently in the midst of a world premiere run at Ensemble Studio Theatre (the work is being co-presented by The Civilians). The play tells the story of an emotionally closed-off Cambodian refugee whose intense memories of the 1970s genocide in Cambodia continues to haunt her – despite being removed by decades and having been transplanted half way around the world to American – affecting the overall well-being of her children. The “speculative science” comes in the form of a medical treatment her scientist daughter (who, in her own way, is just as closed off as her mother) is developing, which would potentially allow her mother to mute her intense emotional response to her memories of the Khmer Rouge and the unspeakable atrocities they committed. Sound familiar? Indeed, the bones of the plots of both Chance and van der Aa’s works align nicely in terms of dramatic dilemma and potential fix. what you are now, however, is a more directly prescriptive cautionary tale, its scientific musings directly linked to the possibility of alleviating the grief caused by underlying trauma, as opposed to Upload‘s more ambitious postulations surrounding technology’s fundamental impact on the human experience. Ultimately, Chanse’s main focus is highlighting the therapeutic benefits of human connection and communication over any option – speculative or not – that erases or hides away memories. Although the play is still a work in progress (the playwright is still on the journey to fully unlocking its characters), the current production directed by The Civilians’ Steve Cosson is honestly acted and thoughtfully staged.