The 2512 Fall Theatre Production, “Beauty and the Bionic Beast,” is well underway. The timeless Disney musical was reinvented to include demographics unknown to 20th century script writers. Most notably, robots are an important part of the production. The lead role of the Bionic Beast will be filled by TheatreBot 101. Though the cast is assembled and is well into rehearsing, many problems have arisen.
Tension has already developed between the robot and human members of the cast. In one particularly contentious instance, many studentbots became frustrated by the human cast members’ inability to memorize their lines quickly. The robots simply input their lines into their internal memory and are ready to perform within seconds. Meanwhile, the humans took issue with the robots’ inabiliy to delivery their lines with any emotion. The robots’ monotone literally put students to sleep.
Kelly Cartwright, the young actress playing Belle, said about TheatreBot 101, “I mean, he knows his lines, but the boringness of his constant monotone is greater than or equal to that of math class. If his voice were a tangible object, it would be a napkin. He could be way more chill—you would think they could program a Channing Efron voice into him or something like that.”
When asked about Cartwright’s comments, TheatreBot 101 was noticeably confused, “Chill? That is not in my vocabulary. Why does this human girl believe that my internal temperature requires decreasing?”
TheatreBot 101 later needed to be taken to Isham. After the eventual hysteria caused by the colloquialism “chill,”
he short-circuited and was unable to perform.
Additionally, there have been some other miscommunications among the cast involving implicit gestures and innuendos.
“One of the humans expressed interest in going to the library stacks with me. I was under the impression that she needed help finding a book. I was mistaken,” said StudentPrototype68.99, who maintains that he was effectively traumatized by the event.
The show’s opening night is less than a week away, but the cast typically spends more time arguing than rehearsing. The leading actors still hold on to some hope that the production will be a success, though the vast majority of the cast has completely given up on “Beauty and the Bionic Beast.” The cast members believe that there would be no purpose in trying to salvage this train wreck of a play and plan on simply winging the performance. “ It’s like chasing a dead cat—there’s just no point!” said Spot ’13 from the K-9 galaxy. The Theatre department now looks forward to next term, when it plans to preform a rendition of Les Misérobots.
