project / teaching / text / set design / direction

AMANDA
World premiere on October 17, 2017 at the Vorpommersche Landesbühne Anklam under the title TRAUMFRAU 2.0.

From a scene study with students of the Theaterakademie Vorpommern in the subject Object Theater, I developed a plot for a chamber play about Artificial Intelligence. Half a year of research and intensive table rehearsals preceded the creation of the script.

In 2024, artificial intelligence is becoming more and more integrated into the everyday lives of ordinary people. Mick, a young start-up entrepreneur, is given his first humanoid female robot named AMANDA by his best friend and business partner Chris.
Confusing Mick at first, he gets more and more involved in living with Amanda – she’s good for him. She is perfect. She has a sense of humor.
Mick’s ethical-moral doubts cannot be wiped away. SHE is not a human being!

Chris: “The human being is nothing else than that. A computer with electrical pathways, heat, cold and pain sensors. He needs fuel for energy, he lives in this world and pursues goals, rejects them, adapts, fails, communicates …
Mick: “But of course we came into being!”
Chris: “Says who? God? Science?”
Life with AI is becoming everyday, normal. But something is missing:
Mick: “I need to get out of here. I haven’t been around people for ages. I don’t even know who lives next door to me. Who are those people next door? Maybe they’re all AIs watching me. (laughs)”

And then:

Mick: “Sure, but… Please don’t laugh. I want Elena.”
Chris: (groans)
Mick: “I want her tantrums, her jealous love, her screaming cry, her curiosity, her giggles, her stupid face when she doesn’t get my jokes, her know-it-all attitude when I tell her about my job. I want to touch her, warm her when she’s cold, smell her hair. Smell her skin. ——- Smell!!! That’s it! (to Amanda) You don’t smell! Like nothing!”
Amanda: “Buy the olfactory enhancement tool. Then you can have me with smell. Pick your favorite scent.”
Mick: “No! Not the smell I want. I want Elena’s smells. ALL OF THEM. Her sweat smell when she comes in from jogging, her mouth smell in the morning after I wake up next to her, her menstrual smell, her smell when I make love to her. “

The plot then takes a very unexpected turn.

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