About The Mechanical:
In 1770, Wolfgang von Kempelen, court science adviser to Austria-Hungarian Empress Maria Theresa, created a mechanical man, fashioned from wood and powered by clockwork, with the ability to play chess with a human opponent. Luminaries such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Benjamin Franklin and Edgar Allen Poe challenged the thinking machine and attempted to understand its closely guarded mechanics—which were in fact powered by an ingeniously secreted human player. Inventor and showman Johann Maelzel continued to tour the automaton until his death in 1838 aboard the steamship Otis, sailing out of Havana. We know this much is true.
But what if the captain of the Otis is the same captain who, twenty years earlier, rescued a half dead Victor Frankenstein from the Artic ice, where Mary Shelley begins her tale? And what if, via spectral machinations and the meddling of zanies, Frankenstein’s creature is transported from the caves of Geneva to the palaces of Vienna and taken in by von Kempelen, to inhabit the secret cabinet of the automaton and use his man-made wits to beat his human opponents as a “thinking machine” ? Would the creature find joy and satisfaction in out-witting the best minds of the human society that previously rejected him, or rebel against the implied superiority of manufactured, mechanical life?
With Brian Foley, Meghan Frank,
Richard Newman, Joanna Sherman,
Joshua Wynter & Anna Zastrow
Written and Directed by Michael McGuigan
Costume Design by Carla Bellisio
Lighting Design by Benjamin Tevelow
Production devised by the Ensemble
Musical selections from Beethoven and other historical sources
Donors
This project is made possible with funding from the NEA, NYSCA, The Department of Cultural Affairs, The Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation, The Tobin Theatre Arts Fund, The Barbara Barondess Foundation, and The Puffin Foundation.
