By JULES SHINKLE
BG Independent News
Ruby wants a life of security and belonging. She wants a family that loves her and a fulfilling job she’s good at. She’s just like us, only not a human.
In Bella Poynton’s play “The Appliance Department,” a tech company named Delphi makes consumer luxury Robotic Companions (RCs) designed to help around the home. Ruby (Kourtney Stierman) and Charlie (Owen Minchau) are two RCs at a department store eagerly awaiting the day someone will walk in to purchase them.
It’s a tedious wait, made worse by the strict guidelines imposed on them by the store manager Miss Abigail (Jade Long). They break up the monotony by reviewing their manual and taking walks around – but never leaving – the store. It never occurred to them that they could want more until a next generation RC arrives, one that shares no intention of doing the bidding of her creator.
Black Swamp Players are putting on “The Appliance Department” under the direction of Story Moosa. Performances are taking place at 115 E. Oak St., Bowling Green. The show ran this past weekend and has three more performances on June 19 – 21. Click here to purchase tickets https://www.onthestage.tickets/show/black-swamp-players/68580f551923c00fad39b690/tickets?fbclid=IwY2xjawSUFTlleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFSMFhWNjhHcjRnS3V1aW5Pc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHsVIdVX834PQ3ouH-gfp2JnTYdbLKpIufDoSVWr0VqTSeMVg2dArNR4rhtts_aem_61EcSGU_2N_dM9IH6vWXgQ#/productions-view.
They capped off their first weekend of shows with a talk-back session featuring Poynton, the playwright. She answered questions from the cast and audience about the play and the themes connecting her work.
“The Appliance Department” is a work of speculative science fiction in the vein of classics like “Blade Runner.” An essential question for both concerns the humanity of robots with interiorities as rich as ours. Who benefits from the denial of a human-like-robot’s personhood?
“I’ve always been interested in robotics,” said Poynton. “For my PhD studies, the thing that I looked at was robotics and AI in theatrical performance.” Poynton, having written several sci-fi plays (e.g. “The Speed of Light,” “The Aurora Project,” “The AI at Delphi”), aimed for her latest to be “a little less nerdy.”
“What if it wasn’t on another planet, not 10,000 years in the future, but here and now. That’s where this play came from.” The setting’s familiarity grounds the audience to think about the obvious parallel to our own contentious technology – generative AI.
“This is a play about obsolescence, in my mind,” said Poynton. A human named Sam (Andrew Packard) has just been replaced by an RC at his job as a professor. The character mirrors Poynton’s own experience of being laid off from Medaille University, a New York private college that shut down in 2023.
Even Ruby, an RC designed specifically for educating, is anxious about being left behind. The newest generation RC, Violet (Angelina Sorge), is equipped with advanced features that outclass Ruby.
“Ruby thinks that she’s obsolete, but she sort of learns, ‘that’s not real.’ As long as I’m moving forward, and as long as I’m growing, there’s more to do.” Ruby’s character arc finds her increasingly critical of her so-called “obsolescence.”
The pressure on her to be cutting edge is born from a norm where efficiency is valued above all. Ruby’s uncanny resemblance of humanity makes her dissection of these norms all the more incisive. What’s interesting here isn’t so much that appliances might someday gain consciousness; instead, humans today have a shocking amount in common with appliances.
“The Appliance Department” is full of existential musings about emergent technology. Black Swamp Players’ production offers a strong exploration into, as Moosa puts it in her director’s notes: “the privilege of being human.”
