In 1770, Wolfgang von Kempelen, court science adviser to Austro-Hungarian Empress Maria Theresa, created a mechanical man fashioned from wood and powered by clockwork with the ability to play chess against 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 hidden human player.

In the first of many weavings of fact and fiction, our play suggests that the captain of the Otis is the same captain who, twenty years earlier, rescued a half dead Victor Frankenstein (the scientist-creator) from the Arctic ice, where Mary Shelley begins her tale.

The ensemble is intrigued by Frankenstein’s forsaken creature and the hidden chess master secretly powering Kempelen’s automaton. Both are isolated and “shut away” by their creators. Though their motives differed, (one looked for glory and the other to curry favor with the Empress), the results were the same: the objectification and marginalization of people.

But what if, our ensemble conjectures, at the height of his despair the refugee creature from Shelley’s novel is miraculously lifted from the fictional world and into the workshop of von Kempelen, who then seizes upon the opportunity and persuades his mysterious new assistant to inhabit the secret cabinet of the automaton.

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?

We are intrigued by the era these creators inhabited. Victor Frankenstein and Kempelen represent the last of a dying breed: the total craftsperson. In their time a pair of shoes, a coat, a basket, a clock could be crafted from beginning to end by one skilled man or woman. With the onset of the industrial revolution and the rise of the assembly line (which Kempelen foretold) a factory full of people would be needed, each to specialize in one piece of the finished product.

Artists, philosophers and theoretical physicists are among the few who still (professionally) attempt to craft/comprehend the complete picture of the universe.

The most striking difference we wish to explore between the nineteenth century and our modern world is the access to information. In conducting our research for this production we have been profoundly struck by the ease in which we can pursue any line of inquiry and locate the most obscure manuscripts, images, and literature through the internet—whether we are at home in New York or an internet cafe in Kabul, Afghanistan. Links on a web page create exciting links in our story.

We like to think we are assembling these discoveries into a neat, entertaining, and “wonder”-ful production, much like Kempelin’s automaton. Of course, there is also a risk we may be creating a Frankenstein monster of mismatched and ill-fitting parts. This is the challenge we find exhilarating!

The 1935 film version of Frankenstein begins with a prologue stating that the story “deals with the two great mysteries of creation: life and death.”

We now find ourselves in an age of unprecedented access to information, from the bogus and obscene to the honest and sublime. These images and texts, both religious and scientific, can be easily manipulated and brazenly interpreted (for good or for evil) by virtually anyone and eventually everyone. In linking the stories of Frankenstein and Kempelin, and the creatures they (and we) manipulate, we hope to explore the other great mysteries of creation: artistic license and responsibility.

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