Think “science fiction” and you probably imagine a “Star Wars” movie, an Isaac Asimov book, a graphic novel or a video game. You might not think of a stage play, performed live by actors without the benefit of CGI.
Yet some writers take up the challenge, including David Templeton, a Bay Area playwright and journalist. His script, “Galatea,” which centers on an android found aboard a transport ship lost for years, is getting a local production here in Missoula this weekend.
Director Reggie Herbert believes the genre can tackle big questions, regardless of the medium.
“Science fiction as a whole helps us discuss what it means to be human,” he said.
Missoula theater company A Quantum Dream is producing “Galatea,” an award-winning science fiction play that premiered in 2021. Ann Peacock, left, plays a doctor treating a synthetic (Jasmine Sherman, right) who was found aboard a long-missing transport ship.
The short version of the plot is simple: a robot visits a therapist, Templeton said in a phone interview. But that set-up allows him to pose questions: What if our artificial creations could be “given the very best attributes of humanity, and maybe programmed to not have any of the bad ones?” he said. What if the “best of us continued on into the future in synthetic forms?”
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After all, stories about robots are really about human nature, he said.
“Are we programmed to do negative things, and can we change that program? Can we ever learn from our own mistakes, or is that baked into how we are?” he said.
A Quantum Dream will present “Galatea” at the ZACC Show Room this week. Tickets are $15-$25, go to zootownarts.org. Writer David Templeton will be on hand Thursday and Friday for Q&As after the performances. Audio description for blind/low vision patrons and open captions available.
- Thursday Nov. 7, 7 p.m.
- Friday, Nov. 8, 7 p.m.
- Saturday, Nov. 9, 1:30 and 7 p.m.
- Sunday, Nov. 10, 1:30 and 7 p.m.
The local production is presented by Herbert’s theater company, A Quantum Dream, which he co-founded with Meg Denny. Part of their mission is to present stories that might draw in audiences who normally don’t go to the theater.
The other plank is an emphasis on contemporary science fiction.
“It’s my favorite vehicle for exploring humanity’s relationship to itself, for our relationship to the Earth, and our relationship to each other, and our relationship to technology,” Herbert said.
They debuted earlier this year with “800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick,” a play about the influential science-fiction author’s final days.
“Galatea,” takes the form of a two-act mystery set in the year 2167. Jasmine Sherman (co-founder of MissCast Productions) is in the lead as Seventy-One, a synthetic who is the sole survivor of a deep-space transport vessel that’s been missing for a century. She undergoes sessions with Dr. Mailer of the Institute for Advanced Robotics, a role filled by Ann Peacock, a veteran local actor who starred in “800 Words.”
While they were reluctant to give away more details of the plot, there are several twists. Templeton added there’s a bit of “My Fair Lady” and the underlying Pygmalion myth, in which the doctor is trying to generate a transformation in his subject.
The four-person cast is rounded out by Stephen Blotzke, a recent University of Montana graduate who’s performed in productions by the Montana Repertory Theatre and the School of Theatre and Dance in the role of a castaway; and Michael Crowley as Dr. Hughes. Crowley, a recent transplant from Washington, has acted in film, radio and more.
The role of Seventy-One is demanding, Herbert said, and he was impressed by the gravitas Sherman’s brought to the difficult task of playing an android who’s evolving, a set-up that could lapse into cliches. Templeton generated his own sort of grammar for Seventy-One’s dialogue, and the sense of character-based realism is aided by the play’s language, which avoids the sci-fi jargon Herbert affectionately refers to as “beep-boop robot.”
It’s a role that can win awards: Abbey Lee of the Spreckels Theatre Company got one for principal performance from the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. The script has gained notice, too, including an honorable mention for the Glickman Award.
The set at the ZACC Show Room is minimalist, with projections to summon the atmosphere of a doctor’s office in a station orbiting Earth. Ben Weiss, who plays keyboards and synthesizers in the band Modality, created an original sound score.
Templeton is coming to see the production himself and is working on a film adaptation.
This isn’t his first foray into genre. One of his scripts, “Mary Shelley’s Body,” takes on horror. “Drumming With Anubis” delves into fantasy. The idea for “Galatea” had been brewing in his mind for years and he began writing in earnest in 2019. A premiere in 2020 was delayed a year by the pandemic. While AI isn’t an unusual story element in science fiction, by 2022 it had entered the news on a regular basis after ChatGPT and other large-language learning models were introduced to the public. He said audiences seem more educated now than when it premiered, and if anything the response to a sci-fi story told on stage has become even more positive.
To him, genre is “an engaging way to tell a story, and using these ideas of spaceships and space stations and cryofreeze and things that we’ve become kind of accustomed to in movies, to use that language in this form, it’s fun,” he said.
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