- The word "robot" entered the lexicon in the script of a 1920 science fiction drama by Karel Čapek, whose title (R.U.R.) stands for "Rossum's Universal Robots." When R.U.R. premiered in Prague on January 25, 1921, Čapek's new word opened up a Pandora's box of possibilities for scientists and science fiction writers.
- During the 1930s, mathematicians Kurt Gödel, Jacques Herbrand, Alonzo Church, and Alan Turing worked on theories and definitions that led to what we now call artificial intelligence.
- In June 1949, George Orwell published his frighteningly prescient novel entitled Nineteen Eighty-Four which, according to Wikipedia, "is set in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Its themes center on the risks of government overreach, totalitarianism, and repressive regimentation of all persons and behaviors within society."
- On Friday, February 13, 2004, I attended a program of short films at the SFIndie Film Festival entitled "Your Warped Mind." One extremely disturbing film stood out from all the others: a 2002 documentary by David Korn-Brzoza that had been made for French television entitled "Echelon: The Secret Power."
- In 2010, intelligence analyst turned whistleblower, Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning leaked a treasure trove of highly sensitive American military and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks -- a move which kept them in jail from 2010 until January 17, 2017, when President Obama commuted all but the last four months of Manning's 35-year sentence.
- In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and subcontractor for the National Security Administration (NSA) leaked top-secret documents which detailed ways in which the United States government, in cooperation with foreign governments and giants in the telecommunications industry, conducted global surveillance that severely compromised the privacy of its citizens. In 2013 Snowden was granted temporary residence by the Russian government. In 2017 his attorney, Anatoly Kucherena, announced that Snowden's temporary residence permit had been extended until 2020.
Earlier this year The New York Times embarked on a major journalistic initiative entitled "The Privacy Project" which has included such articles as "I’m a Judge -- Here’s How Surveillance Is Challenging Our Legal System" by James Orenstein, "Facebook and Google Trackers Are Showing Up on Porn Sites" by Charlie Warzel, "I Used to Work for Google -- I Am a Conscientious Objector" by Jack Poulson, and "I Used Google Ads for Social Engineering -- It Worked" by Patrick Berlinquette.
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Over in Berkeley, Central Works is presenting a "shared" world premiere (with Luna Stage in West Orange, New Jersey) of a political thriller that has essentially been "ripped from the headlines" and is being promoted with the hashtag #MyWifeIsAWhistleBlower. Dramatist Christina Gorman makes no bones about who, why, and what inspired her to write Roan @ The Gates:“Edward Snowden seemed to know nothing would be the same and I was fascinated by the idea of being 29 years old and blowing up your life. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so strongly about anything in my life that I’d walk away from everyone and everything for it. But if your government can access information from your present or your past, they can use it to get you to do what they want. They can get to a CEO. They can get to a Presidential candidate. What’s being collected and stored is not information, it’s leverage.”
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| Lauren Hayes (Roan) and Jeunée Simon (Nat) co-star in Roan @ The Gates (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
As Gorman's play begins, the audience encounters a married lesbian couple having a difficult time communicating. Roan (Lauren Hayes) seems to be experiencing nausea and stomach pain, but is reluctant to say whether her symptoms could be due to food poisoning or work-related stress. Her wife, Nat (Jeunée Simon), is an African American attorney with a razor sharp mind who is trying not to turn her concern about her wife's health into a professional interrogation.
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| Jeunée Simon (Nat) and Lauren Hayes (Roan) co-star in Roan @ The Gates (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
When Nat suggests that Roan postpone or cancel her business trip scheduled for the following morning, she finds her questions being stonewalled in a strange manner. Without being evasive, her wife's answers range from a solid "no" to suggestions that a change of plans is impossible for reasons Nat could not possibly understand. It's obvious that, although these two women have been married for several years and sincerely want to have a child together, communication is not always their strong point.
From Nat's point of view, the basic questions are: Does Roan need to go to the Emergency Room? Is she sulking over some perceived insult that Nat does not know about? What Nat doesn't understand is that her wife is about to take a giant leap of faith that could destroy their relationship. The real challenge awaiting Nat is whether she could still love Roan if her wife followed her conscience but kept Nat in the dark.
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| Lauren Hayes (Roan) and Jeunée Simon (Nat) co-star in Roan @ The Gates (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
A sharply-written, taut and fraught two-hander under the careful direction of M. Graham Smith, Roan @ The Gates manages to keep ratcheting up the dramatic tension without ever losing sight of the grave risks being undertaken by an intelligence analyst working for the NSA who has chosen to go rogue without telling her wife. In her program note, dramaturg Molly Conway writes:
"The Internet has long occupied a strange liminality between public and private life. We post and tag pictures and stories online, we stream media, make purchases, subscribe not just to goods and services, but ideas and influencers as well. Our digital presence is a portrait more intimate than any we could generate intentionally, painted in thousands of points of data that we generate every day. It shows who we are and what we value, and often the distances between. Roan @ The Gates asks us to consider not a statistic, but a story. The story of what one person sacrifices to truly live her values. It's never been easier to become educated about injustice, but arguably it's never been easier to ignore it either."
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| Poster art for Roan @ The Gates |
"There are 50 seats in this theater. Assuming that everyone in them as a cell phone on their person, there could be at least as many devices present during a performance which are hackable by the National Security Administration (even if they're turned off). This fact should be shocking. But is it? Or have we already resigned ourselves to complacency as the price of convenience? The story of Roan is not one that comforts, but one that confronts. One that asks us to consider how committed we truly are to what we claim to value. If you take no other lessons from this play, at least do this much: tell your people you love them and then change your passwords."
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| Jeunée Simon (Nat) and Lauren Hayes (Roan) co-star in Roan @ The Gates (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
With costumes by Tammy Berlin, lighting by Gary Graves, and sound design by Gregory Scharpen, Smith has skillfully overcome two site specific challenges in mounting Gorman's thriller. The first (and most obvious) is the fact that the seating configuration places the two actors in a tiny playing space surrounded by the audience on three sides of the room. The second is that, with Roan having been isolated in Russia and normal communication seemingly impossible, the audience must suspend any sense of disbelief in the scene where Nat manages to visit Roan in Russia (as well as subsequent scenes in which the two women must communicate by a secure Skype-like videochat program which is vulnerable to static, dropped connections, and one participant's agitated pacing moving her in and out of the camera's view).
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| Lauren Hayes (Roan) and Jeunée Simon (Nat) co-star in Roan @ The Gates (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
In no way do those challenges prevent Smith and his two actors from making the government's threat to Roan's health and welfare seem desperately real. As the less histrionic partner in the marriage, Lauren Hayes gives a convincing portrayal of a computer programmer who is an expert at working with code yet understands when it is best to clam up and keep her mouth shut. The fact that Roan has so critically jeopardized her citizenship, her relationship, and her hopes of raising a child leaves her wife (an aggressive attorney eager to marshal the friends and resources at her fingertips) fighting a seemingly unwinnable struggle in which silence may be the safest strategy. An extremely versatile artist familiar to Bay area audiences, Jeunée Simon brings impressive levels of passion, anger, aggression, and disbelief to her portrayal of Roan's wife, Nat.
Performances of Roan @ The Gates continue through August 18 at the Berkeley City Club (click here for tickets).
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