In Information, Matthew Libby’s cautionary story of the great attain of massive tech, it’s Area Stage’s technical manufacturing that almost all persuasively tells the story. The manufacturing’s design group is on the identical web page with Area Inventive Director Hana S. Sharif’s program remark that theater requires the alternative of consolation. The set, sound, and lighting designs create a closed, harsh, inhuman world that overwhelms the lives and private issues of its inhabitants.
Coming into the Kogod Cradle, the viewers sees Marsha Ginsberg’s set, a metallic, box-like construction paying homage to the inside of a larger-than-life transport container, bathed in a chilly inexperienced hue in Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting design. An H-shaped neon lighting fixture dominates the ceiling of the construction.
Karan Brar (Maneesh) in ‘Data.’ Picture by T. Charles Erickson Pictures.
The viewers hears the amped-up repetitive beats of Dan Kluger’s digital dance music rating, into which Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound design immerses the viewers at a excessive decibel degree. The quantity degree is a function, not a bug, a alternative that pulls the viewers into the play’s theme of the dehumanizing energy of our digital setting.
Because the play proceeds, the colours of the lighting of the set change however stay cool. With few exceptions, there isn’t a visible heat available. Between scenes, a obvious, transferring border of lights follows an oblong path across the sides and high of the set, delineating the boundaries of the field wherein the characters — and by extension the viewers — are contained, because the blaring sound reasserts itself. General, the manufacturing succeeds at making a sensory analog of a world dominated by the manipulation of knowledge by powers far out of people’ management.
The characters work for Athena, an AI-centered agency engaged on a secret authorities contract. Maneesh (Karan Brar) is a brand new worker who, in school, developed a killer algorithm to foretell uncommon occasions. Having qualms concerning the potential makes use of of his creation, he first works within the humdrum “user experience” (UX) part of the corporate, however quicky finds himself drawn into the extra prestigious information analytics division. As soon as he learns the total goal for which the Division of Homeland Safety needs to make use of the product Athena is growing (it issues immigration, which strikes a very chilling observe these days), he faces an moral dilemma.
A Sikh whose dad and mom immigrated from India, Maneesh is a nervous, unsure younger man, deeply involved with assembly his overbearing dad and mom’ expectations, however eager to do the proper factor. Whereas there are snippets of details about his pre-Athena existence, like the opposite characters he lives wholly inside Athena’s none-too-friendly confines. Automobiles for the play’s themes, the characters will not be folks the viewers will get to know in depth.
Maneesh works for Alex (Rob Yang), himself an immigrant from Singapore. Properly-regarded in his area (he has given TED talks about it), Alex is actually a center supervisor, exerting energy over the employees on his mission whereas underneath fixed strain from above. To fulfill his deadlines, Alex pushes Maneesh to permit his algorithm to hurry up the mission.
TOP: Karan Brar (Maneesh) and Rob Yang (Wang Tao (Alex); ABOVE: Isabel Van Natta (Riley) and Karan Brar (Maneesh), in ‘Data.’ Pictures by T. Charles Erickson Pictures.
Whereas Alex seeks to make use of Maneesh to maneuver his mission ahead, his co-worker and school acquaintance Riley (Isabel Van Natta) seeks to make use of him to undermine the mission by serving to her blow the whistle on it to the press. Having lengthy suffered the unrelenting sexism of the tech trade, Riley speaks of being indignant on a regular basis. Past her anger, she has real ethical issues concerning the mission, which she likens to the “predictive policing” of the film Minority Report.
The fourth character is Jonah, a too-hale-and-hearty, none-too-bright, weight-lifting bro, caught in UX the place “streamlining” (i.e., downsizing) threatens his job. He envies the characters who work in information analytics, the place the motion is and the place layoffs are much less possible. The opposite characters have an ethical compass, even when they rationalize setting it apart. Jonah, prepared to betray others to guard himself, has none.
Jonah and Maneesh start the present enjoying ping-pong, awkwardly speaking as they bat the ball slowly forwards and backwards. (Credit score is due the actors for preserving the bouncing ball and features working collectively easily.) Typically, even other than the recurring ping-pong sequences, the characters’ interactions are halting, actual conversations being at a premium.
Actual conversations do occur in two key scenes. The again of the set opens to a loading dock, the place ambient sounds of the skin world are heard for the one time within the play, as Maneesh and Riley talk about the ethical implications of their work. Right here they’re bodily in addition to morally stepping outdoors the field.
Later, Maneesh and Alex meet in a convention room. Maneesh factors out that his algorithm might damage actual folks in the actual world, together with his dad and mom and Alex himself. Alex counters not solely with threats and inducements however with an ethical argument. Information and its use in governmental selections exist (he cites the Chinese language “social credit” system for instance), and if Athena and the American authorities don’t prevail on this digital arms race, then industrial and worldwide opponents will create worse outcomes.
Director Margot Bordelon retains the tempo of the present crisp, with a positive sense of when to range the tempo. In lots of scenes, actors ship traces at a quick clip, consistent with the pace at which tech work strikes. When, as in these two key scenes, characters have necessary issues to say and are listening to 1 one other, the tempo slows appropriately.
No person within the play mentions Twentieth-century American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, however in his 1932 guide, Ethical Man and Immoral Society, he argued that particular person morality is intrinsically incompatible with collective life, making social and political battle inevitable. How, if in any respect, can particular person morality mitigate the persistence of collective immorality, whether or not in firms or nations? That’s primarily the battle that drives this provocative play of concepts concerning the data-driven world wherein we dwell our every day lives.
Working Time: Roughly one hour and 40 minutes, with no intermission.
Information performs by means of December 15, 2024, within the Kogod Cradle at Area Stage, 1101 sixth Road SW, Washington, DC. Tickets ($75–$149) could also be obtained on-line, by cellphone at 202-488-3300, or in particular person on the Gross sales Workplace (Tuesday-Sunday, 12-8 p.m.). Area Stage affords financial savings applications together with “pay your age” tickets for these aged 35 and underneath, scholar reductions, and “Southwest Nights” for these dwelling and dealing within the District’s Southwest neighborhood. To study extra, go to arenastage.org/savings-programs.
This system for Information is on-line right here.
COVID Security: Area Stage recommends however doesn’t require that patrons put on facial masks in theaters besides in designated mask-required performances (November 16 at 2 p.m. and December 1 at 7:30 p.m.). For up-to-date info, go to arenastage.org/security.
DataBy Matthew LibbyDirected by Margot Bordelon
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