Puppeteers for Fears return with AI-themed Robopocalypse
The premise of Robopocalypse: The Musical! sounds, on paper, like a high-speed collision of several ideas.
A tech billionaire invents a self-driving car that accidentally kills his wife, a tragedy that estranges him from his teenage daughter. Unable to communicate, each begins work on AI projects. Neither finishes, but their creations merge accidentally and go rogue, threatening the world, and the only ones who can stop it are two people who can’t talk to each other.
Oh, and there are puppets — wonderfully weird, and futuristic in a zany, retro way.
“It’s a wholly irrational project by any reasonable measure … it shouldn’t exist,” Puppeteers for Fears founder Josh Gross said in a recent Zoom interview. Yet it does, and with sufficient momentum to carry the Portland, Oregon-based hand-and-rod troupe through a 30-city national tour that includes a stop at BNH Stage in Concord on July 14.
Gross first wrote and performed Robopocalypse in 2018, and the world caught up to him some time later. The musical addresses AI at a moment when it’s become, as he puts it, “not science fiction anymore — just science.” When tools like ChatGPT launched a couple years ago, he continued, the company decided it was time to take the show nationwide.
Gross’s production has evolved, but it remains grounded in a philosophical tension between two AI schools of thought.
“One is that it’s a tool; another is that people are actually trying to create life,” he said. “But the thing about all life and consciousness is that a key component is a sense of self-preservation. If something is created as a tool but then achieves consciousness, it’s going to understand that a tool is property. And property doesn’t have control over its own outcomes.”
What’s changed about the show is what it’s wrapped in — a story that’s ultimately about what a parent owes to the life he helped create, and what it owes him. A father is trying to invent his way back to happiness after a tragedy, as his daughter tries to earn his attention by matching him on his own terms.
That two people can’t heal until they’re forced to face something they can only stop together is “a human story that anyone can relate to,” Gross said. “And putting it in the context of what we’re all facing right now, where people have very strong opinions on AI. It’s happening whether we want it to or not; we’ve got to figure out what to do.”
Puppeteers for Fears’ fun characters, Gross believes, are ideal for conveying the hard messages in Robopocalypse. “Puppets exist somewhere between reality and simulation. You can see them doing things, but we also know it’s a performance … someone putting on a mask. We make the conscious decision to accept that this thing lives in between.”
That liminality mirrors the many questions being grappled with when it comes to AI itself, like is it real consciousness or simulated? Is virtual reality real because it’s experienced as such, or manufactured because it’s made of ones and zeros? Hearing it all from talking cars and other next-level creations softens the blow.
The entire score for Robopocalypse was written on analog synthesizer, which Gross learned for the first time from how-to VHS tapes uploaded to YouTube. The Arturia MiniBrute he purchased from Portland vintage store Control Voltage wasn’t easy to tame, he said. “It’s not exactly an instrument you play so much as a runaway train you’re trying to hold on to.”
Gross is quick to say that his puppet musical isn’t for children — but not because of the usual reasons.
“Kids don’t have the attention span for a feature-length show about the nature of grief and technology,” he said. “There are a few f-bombs and some mature content, but the biggest thing is it’s just a bit long.”
That said, BNH Stage lists the performance as 18+.
Puppeteers for Fears is self-contained on the road, traveling with its own screen, lighting trusses, and sound. A recent grant from the Oregon Community Foundation to upgrade what Gross called “technology we’d been holding together with duct tape and shoelaces for a while” really helped elevate Robopocalypse to national tour-worthiness.
It’s a long way from their debut in Ashland, Oregon, on Halloween 2015 in a Renaissance Faire-themed bar that held 30 people but drew over five times that and inspired them to continue. “It continues to astonish me,” Gross said. “I’ve played a lot of empty rooms in other projects.”
Puppeteers for Fears presents Robopocalypse: The Musical!
When: Tuesday, July 14, at 8 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Admission: $26, ccanh.com 18+
Featured photo: Robopocalypse. Courtesy photo.