Heddatron

Les Freres Corbusier finally transforms Ibsen’s classic into something truly well-made: A robot. Half a dozen of them. Live onstage. With Heddatron, the company continues its irreverent massacre of historical icons and academic esoterica by taking on famed playwright Henrik Ibsen, and contemporary issues in robotics. Ibsen is thwarted by August Strindberg and his kitchen slut throughout his fevered struggle to write the great feminist drama, Hedda Gabler, while a contemporary housewife in Michigan is abducted by robots and forced to perform Ibsen’s masterpiece over and over again…
With real functioning robots portraying half of the parts, alongside humans who will play the other half, Heddatron will be one of the first theatrical productions to use functional robots as actors. Employing robotic automation and text-to-speech software, humans will perform opposite a hunky Lovborg-bot, a clunky Tessman-bot, as well as blinking, smoking, and whirring co-stars who portray Judge Brack, Aunt Julie and the rest of Ibsen’s menagerie. Heddatron is written by Elizabeth Meriwether, and directed by Alex Timbers.