Chronicle by Carmen Tărniceru
For a long time, I have not seen a show that slapped me in the face as violently as the Uncanny Valley, on an ordinary festival evening. Never before have I felt so close to me the frustration of a machine that seemed to breathe, feel, and live. And it would never have occurred to me to make any analogy between the soul and the software. What is a robot? A developed guided entity (like any human, if we were to consider predetermination or education), with algorithmically constructed, coded "genetics" (again, a ravishing similarity), but who is not allowed to have feelings, emotions, and initiatives. It seems frustrating if we look through the human lens, but we are not allowed to cross this limit in our relationship with machines. The show Uncanny Valley touches an almost impermissible extreme. It gives human features to the robot, it seems to give it a forbidden freedom, and, moreover, it gives it the status of perfection.
Do you have a defect, a bipolar disorder that grinds you, a disease that does not allow you to go on with your life as you would have liked? No problem. You create an Android in your image and likeness, a kind of Adam (or a snake), you give it your best, and then you can quietly end your way on this Earth. Like an unpretentious demiurge. Thus, your problems, sufferings, frustrations, and dissatisfactions disappear. What is uplifting, ideas, creation, goals, and life will be taken over, robotically and impeccably completed by the absolute heir.
Finally, we learn with stupor how we can reach perfection. Ironically, through an existentialist speech.
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"Theatre Chronicle @ Eurothalia" is a programme conceived by Daniela Șilindean together with the team of the German State Theatre Timișoara, within the Eurothalia 2023 European Theatre Festival, held between 20-30 September 2023, financed by the National Cultural Program Timișoara - European Capital of Culture in 2023.
