WRITER/PRODUCER’S NOTE
We’re living in dark and cynical times, and generative AI is only one of many potential causes for worldwide ecological and economic collapse. Little wonder there’s been so much talk lately of the machines finally rising up to destroy humanity. Yet in all the morbid and ubiquitous references to Terminator 2, nobody ever thinks to mention that the humans win in that movie. Of all the “machine uprising” scenarios we see in pop culture and social media, precious few ever actually depict the machines successfully exterminating humankind, or what the machines would do with the world if they got it. (Funny enough, one such exception was Karel Capek’s R.U.R., the play that invented the modern concept of robots.)
Moreover, this skepticism and mistrust of technology is a distinctly western attitude. Look over to Japan — home of countless iconic and long-running franchises featuring heroic robots of all shapes and sizes — and the culture has a generally optimistic outlook toward technology’s capacity for good. This brought me to a far more interesting question: What if sentient machines put in their sincerest and fullest effort to save humanity… and they couldn’t? If they tried and failed to prevent the extinction of humanity, how could they cope with a failure that huge?
Recently, M3GAN 2.0 suggested an analogous parent/child relationship between humans and sentient AI. Anno Machina is a story about those children grieving those parents. As all parents must die because all humans must die, it follows that the human race itself must eventually die. On a personal and species-wide level, the same advice goes: Get your affairs in order now and reckon with what you’re leaving behind before it’s too late.
If this play is an audio/visual extravaganza, built around an epic and sprawling sci-fi world, that’s entirely due to the efforts and encouragement of Mishelle and my other collaborators. Personally, I was happy enough with the script as an outlet for my thoughts and emotions about dealing with grief and finding a way forward when all hope seems lost. If you come away from this entertained, I’ll be grateful. If even one person comes away from this show finding the strength to get through some personal hard times — or maybe even the greater sociopolitical hard times we’re all in right now — this whole project will have been worth everything as far as I’m concerned.
—William Thomas Berk
Writer/Producer, Anno Machina