Last monday, we saw a play called "Interruptor" which was created by the theatre group Cuer2. And it revolved around media and technology these days, and how they affect our lives today.

As the play started, i found it hard to understand and give meaning to the what was happening because it was all over the place. The two actors would speak as children, then they would switch to news reporters, political figures and even the pope, and i just couldnt find a way to connect these, but as the play progressed, a pattern started emerging, when the actors repeated a sequence of different news stories in the same order for example, which started giving an idea of some sort of connection between the little scenes. And towards the end of the play it became clear that the characters on stage were actually children playing as if they were inside a computer or a television, thus creating these random shifts between settings as if the television was changing channels.

The stage had movable walls which were made up of an assortment of cables, discs and broken or old electronic devices, and the scenery were all broken CPU's and monitors and two cushions.and this was enough to create all of the different situations because the actions themselves are part of the character's imagination. So the scenery worked very nicely with the plot. The scenery also gave a slight impression about what the play was going to be about the moment the audience walks into the stage. The lights were fixed for the most part, but there was one light that was lit when the characters "inside" the TV look at the audience thats watching themand it created a neat effect because when one is in front of a screen, the light from the screen is refleced on one's face, and the same thing happened on the other side of the screen this time. Im not certain if it was intentional or not but it created a nice effect.

As far as the acting goes I really enjoyed the character transformations and the versatility of the actors to switch between characters instantly and still do a good performance. The characterisation was really good, and I specially remember one scene where the actors were middle-aged women and were talking about the news and broadcasts, where I really felt i was seeing two middle-aged women discussing about news, not only the body movements but also the voice, if i had my eyes closed i wouldve believed that there were two women onstage and not the actors i had seen previously. Another thing i would highlight would be the moment in which they go from being children to news reporters, in which they go through a little period of transformation as if they were made out of electrical parts, and they make very eclectic and robot-like movements, which accompanied by the sound effects blended really well.

Overall, the message I got from the play was that media and technology, instead of bringing us together as they were intended to, they actually separate us from each other. Human interaction and critical thinking are replaced by digital conversations and spoon-fed information, and that is what is happening right now in the world, the younger generations are learning everyday to use computers and digital means to do everything, and all that makes us human is disappearing.

Obviously its not as if the world was going to lose all human charisma and emotion just because all of the media and technology, because even if it is what's happening right now, our past has taught us that there will most likely be a movement that will go against that in the future, like comparing the middle ages and the renaissance, because after all the world always reaches a point of natural balance.

In the film industry, digital arts and technology have started replacing various previously man-made aspects like stunt doubles which are replaced with digital models or the setting which can now be a green screen, and even acting is being replaced by digital actors. Will this merging of the digital and the natural ever happen in theatre to the same extent?