R.U.R. Redux
(adapted from Karel Capek's "R.U.R.")

SYNOPSIS:
Helen, an attractive young woman, visits the Rossum Universal Robot (R.U.R.) factory complex, which is located on a remote island. Her mission is to ensure that human rights are extended to the humanoid robots that are manufactured there. She encounters opposition from factory management, as well as complete apathy from the robots. She marries the charismatic CEO of R.U.R., and remains on Rossum’s island, all the while striving to convince the scientists there that they should upgrade the robots’ emotional wiring and treat them more like human beings.
Robots are originally sold and employed as laborers who are efficient and cheap. Thousands of them are sold for that purpose; however, as workers all over the world start losing their jobs, they rebel against the robots and start destroying them. To protect their investment, owners train their robots to defend themselves. Governments inevitably begin using robots as soldiers. In the span of about ten years, the robots, who have begun to develop rudimentary emotions, realize that they are being exploited and rebel against their human masters. The management of the Rossum factory becomes the last bastion of the human race. As they all desperately search for the causes and cures of the problem they have created, they and Helen are overwhelmed by the robot horde.
All human beings in the world have been exterminated, except Alquist, the R.U.R. factory architect. She was initially spared because she liked to lay bricks alongside robots and did not resist their assault. Now the robots hope that Alquist can recreate the formulas that would enable them to produce new generations of robots. But the manuscript that contained Rossum’s original formulas had been burned by Helen, and Alquist (a man in the original play, but a woman in Hana’s adaptation) was never involved in the manufacturing process.
In spite of the absence of human life in the world and the robots’ inability to produce a new generation, a spark of hope emerges at the end of the play. Two robots, created in the last days of the factory at Helen’s request, begin demonstrating human traits, such as imagination, altruism and feelings for each other. We are left with the hope that a new life, spiritually -- but not genetically -- linked to humanity can begin again, after all.

CHARACTERS (requires a total of eight actors in multiple roles):
HARRY DOMIN, DR. JOHN GALL, DR. FRED HALLEMEIER, CONSUL BUSMAN, BABARA ALQUIST, HELEN GLORY, NANNY, OLD ROSSUM, YOUNG ROSSUM, MARIUS, SULLA, RADIUS, DAMON, PRIMUS, ROBOT HELEN, ROBOT 1 &2.

SAMPLE DIALOGUE:

DOMIN
Sulla, please give our visitor your excellent talk on our corporate history.

SULLA (Standing, facing HELEN.)
It all began in 1886 when Mr. Rossum came to this island to study marine life. Part of his work involved using chemical synthesis to create living matter. A few years later he unexpectedly stumbled upon a substance that behaved exactly like living tissue, although it had a different chemical composition.

DOMIN
This was in 1892, exactly four hundred years after Columbus discovered America. (Motions to Sulla to continue.) Go on, Sulla.

LIGHTS UP on OLD ROSSUM in a white lab coat.

OLD ROSSUM
Nature has found only one way to organize living matter. (Lifts a jar with a jelly-like substance and looks at it admiringly.) Today, I discovered an alternate path that evolution might have taken. It’s simpler, more flexible and doesn’t require divine intervention. Ha!

DOMIN
Now imagine, Miss Glory, that he wrote these portentous words while pondering a blob of some colloidal jelly that even a dog wouldn’t eat.

OLD ROSSUM
With this new material, we can replicate the entire tree of life, all the way up to mankind.

DOMIN
Miss Glory, this was an extraordinary moment in history.

HELEN
Fascinating!

DOMIN
Now the task was to get life out of that test tube and create some organs, bones and nerves and whatever, and cook up various compounds, catalysts, enzymes, hormones, and all that jazz. Do you follow?

HELEN
I… A little, I suppose.

DOMIN
Old Rossum could have made whatever he wanted out of all that gunk. He could have concocted a jelly fish with the brain of Socrates or an earthworm two hundred feet long. But since he had no sense of humor, he got it into his head to create a regular vertebrate.

OLD ROSSUM (Proudly handling a stuffed animal)
To test my theory, I have created this dog. A living dog. Next, I shall create a man.