When Karel Capek took up the theme of androids, the creation
A
selection from the opening of _R.U.R._ will show the
gist of Capek's intention with this
play. Capek was no mere
spinner of space operas, but many of
his works had deep philosophical
roots. He cared about truth and
justice, and these values were informed
by his readings of philosophers,
especially the then-modern philosopher
Bergson's still-controversial questions about the nature of time
as we experience it versus time as a
physics process inspired Capek
to use a refractive approach in his
narration of tales. Not only time
was able to be seen from different
angles but the entire scene of human
action. Capek didn't accept that one
character could see the truth
and thus communicate it to the reader.
In some novels and stories,
Capek used the same event told by
different narrators, to show what
he considered to be the truth: that
which lay between all the
participants' versions of the tale.
One such Capek novel was _Meteor_,
wherein six eyewitnesses and
acquaintances of the victim describe
the same plane crash in hopes of
piecing together the identity of the
plane's survivor.
Whose truth do we get in such a play as _R.U.R._?
Who were those robots and what did they have to say
to the world of
1920?
Click here for the excerpt from _R.U.R._:
From where did the inspiration come, then? Click here to see
what Capek himself said prompted his
robot play:
What did critics in the early 1920s make of such an odd play
on Broadway and in book form?
See a few selected contemporary critics, here:
Staging a Capek play is always a challenge, due to some of the
demands he made on actors. _R.U.R._
was an expressionist play and
that is a source of perennial mayhem
for directors. How stiff
should the Robots be? Here are
some comments about the adventure
of producing Capek onstage:
I know that this would have pleased ol' Karel. There is now a comprehensive web site showing people's own handmade androids. You will recall after reading our RUR excerpt that the original robots were really androids. Now people are tinkering them together and showing home photos.