Gob Squad, My Square Lady: Komische Oper Berlin

About the Event

A robot called Myon, the internationally acclaimed performance group Gob Squad and specialists from a wide variety of departments of the Komische Oper Berlin have come together to create this work.

What makes a person a person? How could an object or a "simple life‐form" be transformed into one? After George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, and Frederick Loewe’s world‐famous musical My Fair Lady, the German/British performance collective Gob Squad is working together with the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory at Humboldt University in Berlin, and the staff and singers of the Komische Oper Berlin in an attempt to provide an answer.

Entitled My Square Lady, this performance sees the Gob Squad leading the autonomous humanoid robot Myon on a voyage of discovery through each department of the Komische Oper Berlin. Myon’s task is to explore opera, as a "power plant of emotion" in all its facets, and in the process learn what it means to feel human emotions, express them, and prompt them in others. Whether Myon makes it as a human being — or even as an opera star — will be demonstrated at the end of the season, on stage at the Komische Oper.

Men and machines. An opera Sensing (2015).

Crew

Arno Waschk, musical direction and arrangement
Gob Squad, concept, direction, set design, and costumes
Manfred Hild, development and support robot
Ulrich Lenz und Christina Runge, dramaturgy
David Cavelius, choir
Kathrin Krottenthaler und Miles Chalcraft, video
Diego Leetz, light

Cast

Robot: Myon
Gob Squad: Johanna Freiburg, Sean Patten, Sharon Smith, Berit Stumpf, Sarah Thom, Bastian Trost, Simon Will
Komische Oper Berlin: Katarina Morfa, Christiane Oertel, Caren Van Oijen, Mirka Wagner, Bernhard Hansky, Carsten Sabrowski, Christoph Späth