The Employees is set aboard a spaceship with strange objects in tow (Pelenguino Photo)
THE EMPLOYEES
Theaterlab Gallery
357 West Thirty-Sixth St., between Eighth & Ninth Aves., third floor
Through June 30, $25-$50
www.themilltheatre.org
“I don’t think we as a category are going to survive,” one of the characters says in Jaclyn Biskup and Lauren Holmes’s fantastical adaptation of Danish poet and author Olga Ravn’s futuristic 2020 book, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century. It’s not clear whether she is talking about humans or humanoids.
The play consists of statements made by four members of the crew of the Six Thousand Ship, comprising humans and humanoids who have collected mysterious objects from the planet New Discovery. Paul Budraitis, Molly Leland, Christopher McLinden, and Aurea Tomeski, wearing white space uniforms, sit on chairs in the four corners of a small, white room; behind each of them hovers a ghostly, floating sheet, while in front of them is a narrow fluorescent light, as if they’re under investigation. The audience of no more than twenty sit along three walls in the same white chairs, equating everyone; at the front, production stage manager Sam Kersnick operates the light and sound, bathing the room in soft, glowing colors and sonic tones. The four crew members occasionally get up and switch seats while a strange object gleams in the middle, radiating like a beating heart.
The narrative unfolds in abstruse, nonlinear testimony that is not always easy to decipher but builds a cryptic, provocative environment as the characters discuss dreams, crying, memories, the unconscious, and death.
“I don’t like to go in there. The three on the floor seem especially hostile. I can’t understand why I feel I’ve got to touch them,” Chris admits. “Two of them are always cold, one is warm. You never know which is going to be the warm one.”
“I hope the work is progressing. I hope you’re doing it well, the work you have to do. I hope he’s not going to die, even if I do know it’s likely,” Molly says.
Aurea reports, “Do you think of me as an offender? I like to be in the room. I find it very erotic. The suspended object, I recognize my gender in it. Or at least the gender I have on the Six Thousand Ship. Every time I look at the object, I can feel my sex between my legs and between my lips. Maybe that’s why you think of me as an offender. Half human. Flesh and technology. Too living.”
“You can still save yourselves. I don’t know if I’m human anymore. Am I human? Does it say in your files what I am?” Paul asks.
These are thoughts we all have at one point or another, even if we don’t use those exact words as we try to find and establish our place in a quickly changing world dominated by big corporations, one in which continued technological advancement and the prospect of ever-more-pervasive AI fill us with both hope and fear.
Four characters share their thoughts on their mission in futuristic play (Pelenguino Photo)
Nora Marlow Smith’s brilliantly white set traps the actors and audience together in the room; when the door is closed, there is no way out, as if we are all on the space ship with no egress. Kristy Hall’s costumes add to the antiseptic atmosphere as Jackie Fox’s lighting and Sabina Mariam Ali’s sound enhance the sci-fi feel.
The worthy ensemble does a convincing job of walking the fine line between human and humanoid; although they are more realistic than Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, just as Data searches for his godlike creator, Dr. Noonien Soong, the four crew members aboard the Six Thousand Ship refer several times to Dr. Lund and his “children.” Molly, who met Dr. Lund before the ship departed, explains, “I didn’t know who I belonged to in his view. Whether I was human or just something that was animate. Even though I was born and brought up and my documents all said human, there was something about his behavior that made me think he didn’t consider me to be an equal, and for a few brief and terrifying seconds I felt I was artificial, made, nothing but a humanoid machine of flesh and blood.”
Seamlessly directed by Biskup (Venus, The Private of Lives of Eskimos [Or 16 Words for Snow]), The Employees is an intimate and intriguing look at where we might be heading a hundred years from now; whether escape will be possible has yet to be decided.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]