ACT Book Club "R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)" by Karel Capek
2021-04-18 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Virtual, PA, United States
Sunday, April 18 at 6 pm
R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) A Fantastic Melodrama in Three Acts and an Epilogue
By Karel Capek Join Altoona Community Theatre and our moderator, ACT member Shane Sedelmyer in a lively discussion of a play in an unusual genre: science fiction. Shane is a pop culture lover and an avid reader. He is a an English teacher and theatre director by trade. He is excited to put both to great use by moderating this book club and supporting ACT. Shane holds a Bachelor of Arts in Integrative Arts from Penn State Altoona and a Master of Arts degree in English Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Rossum’s Universal Robots by Karel Capek
R.U.R. is a 1920 science-fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. “R.U.R.” stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots, a phrase that has been used as a subtitle in English). It premiered on 25 January 1921 and introduced the word “robot” to the English language and to science fiction as a whole. R.U.R. quickly became influential after its publication. By 1923, it had been translated into thirty languages. The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people, called roboti (robots), from synthetic organic matter. They are living creatures of artificial flesh and blood rather than machinery, so they more closely follow the modern concept of androids. They may be mistaken for humans and can think for themselves. They seem happy to work for humans at first, but a robot rebellion leads to the extinction of the human race. Čapek later took a different approach to the same theme in War with the Newts, in which non-humans become a servant class in human society. R.U.R. was successful in its time in Europe and North America. The Robots described in Čapek’s play are not robots in the popularly understood sense of an automaton. They are not mechanical devices, but rather artificial biological organisms that may be mistaken for humans. A comic scene at the beginning of the play shows Helena arguing with her future husband, Harry Domin, because she cannot believe his secretary is a robotess:

DOMIN: Sulla, let Miss Glory have a look at you. HELENA: (stands and offers her hand) Pleased to meet you. It must be very hard for you out here, cut off from the rest of the world. SULLA: I do not know the rest of the world Miss Glory. Please sit down. HELENA: (sits) Where are you from? SULLA: From here, the factory. HELENA: Oh, you were born here. SULLA: Yes I was made here. HELENA: (startled) What? DOMIN: (laughing) Sulla isn’t a person, Miss Glory, she’s a robot. HELENA: Oh, please forgive me…

The entire script can be found HERE for free on Project Gutenberg. This is the version we will be using for referencing page numbers, but any version of the script that you have access to is okay. The discussion will be held by Zoom and you can join us by clicking HERE.
