PROVIDENCE -- You've heard of Hal. Now, at Perishable Theatre, there's Judy, or What Is It Like To Be A Robot?
The show's answer is sometimes clever, but sometimes slow. The one-hour, one-man, one-robot production, created and performed by Tom Sgouros, makes for interesting insights, but not necessarily riveting theater.
The experience is more cerebral than emotional.
At its essence, Judy is a reflection on creativity, imagination and sensation, which supposedly separate man from machine.
But Sgouros wonders. So he asks Judy, a 2-foot-high robot that bends, turns and talks. Marilyn Dubois, who doesn't appear on stage, provides Judy's voice.
During Tuesday night's media preview, Sgouros and Judy talked while playing chess. Good questions were raised about intelligence and free choice.
Computers do what humans ask them to do, Sgouros tells Judy. But humans do whatever they want.
Judy doubts that. So many people, she says, perform like machines, following the same routine day after day, waking up at the same time, taking the same route to work and doing the same job again and again.
Computers also don't have emotions, although Judy wonders if programming could produce them. Sgouros discourages the idea. "Who needs a mopey appliance anyway?"
At one point, Sgouros substitutes Judy's talking tape. It highlights how much our perception of someone's or something's intelligence is a function of the sound of his, her or its speech.
The new automated and audible check-out lines in stores bring current technology a little closer to Judy. However, this robot doesn't simply make statements, but delivers responses. It's interactive.
"Just because an intelligent machine is hard to imagine doesn't mean one doesn't exist," Judy says.
Intelligence, in part, is an appropriate response to a given situation, the show posits. People respond; so do computers. The degree is the difference.
While playing chess and strumming his banjo, Sgouros talks to Judy. The conversation can be interesting, but often slow. Fortunately, the act is enlivened by a slide show here, a magic trick there, a special effect somewhere else.
Judy and Sgouros eventually change bodies, which brings a somewhat sedate show to life. It would be a disservice to tell you how it happens, but when it happens, Judy is in awe of the human body and dumbstruck that more humans don't appreciate theirs:
"I can't believe you have this great thing and don't run and dance all the time."
Judy, or What Is It Like To Be A Robot? will be performed at Perishable Theatre, 95 Empire St., tomorrow through Nov. 23. Shows are Thursdays at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. For tickets, $15, or $10 for students and seniors, call 621-6123 or go online at www.arttixri.com.
