It's a testament to the speed of change — and also, perhaps, to the urgency for change — that playwright Ken LaZebnik's futuristic new play is set not 50 or 20 years from now, but just three years hence.
"Autonomy" is an epic-scale atmospheric work that addresses immigration, climate change and the implications of a future where humans share the road with more and more self-driving vehicles. It premiered Thursday at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.
It's the biggest show, scale-wise, for producer Mixed Blood Theatre and artistic director Jack Reuler.
The show, which is as much a spectacle and event as it is a play, is up for just this weekend. It's a little messy, with stop-start scenes that bleed into each other. But it's well worth a look.
"Autonomy" yokes theater, concern for the environment and cars into a 90-minute golf-cart promenade. Patrons are wheeled from one scene to another wearing headsets (Scott Edwards did the sound design). It's a different way of doing theater. Like spreading a building wide instead of building it tall.
At each scene, the waiting actors, starting with Gabby (Isabella LaBlanc), come alive to perform LaZebnik's big narrative about a talented undocumented immigrant who loses a father to a truck accident. Gabby now wants to write code for self-driving vehicles, which have the promise of reducing road fatalities.
Tragic as they are, though, car accidents are a reliable source of organ donations. A millennial waiting for a heart transplant (Tom Reed) wants to hack into vehicles to deliberately cause wrecks.
The subplots are all about the costs of human impact — both on our planet and one another. In just three years, if "Autonomy" is to be heeded, the melting permafrost will give up pathogens that create pandemics. Meanwhile, corporations led by Amazon and Tesla will own our wishes and dreams.
