This month, we keep things close to home, which makes sense given that last month we were quite far from home. We go small like we’ve never gone before, diving into a local adaptation of R.U.R., or Rossum’s Universal Robots, by Karel Čapek.
It’s not necessary to have gone to our local theater for the new adaptation, as it’s really quite close to the original. The 1920 play is worth reading, only takes a couple of hours, but it’s very much of its time. We talk director/adapter Matthew Zrebski about the changes he made and their impact on the story being told. So even if you didn’t get to see the new version, you can still enjoy the conversation and look into a creative’s mind.
Really this just gave us an excuse to talk about an extremely influential piece of SF history.
https://lakewoodtheatrecompany.csstix.com/event-details.php?e=1119
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/karel-capek/r-u-r/paul-selver_nigel-playfair
I enjoyed listening to this! The production sounds great. I see that https://librivox.org/ has 2 audio versions of this. Alas, the better-sounding one with a fun jazz track is in German (I don’t remember enough from college). I did listen to this album https://djedjotronic.bandcamp.com/album/r-u-r (Kraftwerk-y, some in English) and watched this vid: https://www.pbs.org/video/oregon-art-beat-playwright-actor-and-educator-matthew-b-zrebski/ and I’d love to see and hear one of Zrebski’s plays.