Reading Railroad Theater to perform play ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’

FAIRFIELD – Members of the troupe Reading Railroad Theater will present a reading of the play “Rossum’s Universal Robots” this week, a 1921 Czech production famous for giving us the word “robot.”

The play will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 26 and 27, at Morning Star Studio on the east side of the Fairfield square. It is being produced by Richard Morell and directed by Nathaniel Adkins. Morell said the play’s author, Karel Capek, asked some powerful questions about robots and technology that humanity is still contemplating a century later.

Adkins said he was introduced to Rossum’s Universal Robots in 2012 while living in southwest Iowa and on a committee to select a play. He noticed that R.U.R. had recently entered the public domain. A few translations had been made into English, but Adkins found the translated dialogue clunky.

Though he does not speak Czech, Adkins sought to improve upon the translations by creating his own. He put the original Czech text into Google translate, and he also compared that product to other translations. Then, he made his own modifications to the text to improve its flow while maintaining the spirit of the original.

The neat piece of literary history from this work is that it’s the origin of the word “robot,” based on Capek’s use of the term “robota” meaning “slave” or “serf” to refer to the artificial beings that serve humans in the story.

Reading Railroad Theater is only a year old, but Adkins already has one acting credit in it, and he’s about to have another. He performed in the troupe’s inaugural play “Pygmalion.” More recently, he mentioned to Morell that he had made his own translation of R.U.R. and thus there would be no cost to rent the script. Morell liked the idea, and they got to work filling out the cast of eight speaking parts. Cast members include Adkins and Morell, plus Andrew MacKenzie, Douglas Marshall, Eileen Gosvig, Jesya Mauro, Marianne Paoletti, and Sam Garchik.

When asked to give his sales pitch for the play, Adkins said the public should come out because “Even though the play is 104 years old now, it’s still very timely. It has a lot of important things to say about our overreliance on technology and what it means to be human.”

Tickets are available at the door with a suggested donation of $10-$12. Adkins said he considers the play “PG-13” because of some adult themes, so parents should be mindful of that.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com