This performance of “MACHINAL” will be the first performance of 2017 in the Qualcomm Institute’s Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS) series. The list of collaborators on the performance Will Detlefsen (director), Mary Glen Fredrick (actor), Grady Kestler (sound designer), Annie Le (designer), Steven Leffue (sound designer), Anna Robinson (designer), Brandon Rosen (lighting designer), Ph.D. student Kristen Tregar, Enrico Nassi (MFA actor), and Stephanie Del Rosso (MFA playwright). The piece is an artistic experiment that asks questions about what live theatre can be and how technology and machines have changed the landscape of our human interactions in the world today. Based on the real life case of Ruth Snyder, this devised performance is the story of a woman caged in a male-dominated, mechanized, materialistic world who murders her husband in order to be set free. The performance will use the Vroom wall display system in the Calit2 Theater for a live performance and interaction with live audience. “MACHINAL is an artistic experiment based on big questions about what live theatre can be and how technology and machines have changed the landscape of our human interactions in the world today,” says Will Detlefsen, an MFA candidate in Directing (expected in 2017) and one of the graduate students behind MACHINAL. The performance is based, in part, on the 1928 play MACHINAL by Sophie Treadwell, based on the true story of the first woman sentenced to the electric chair for murdering her husband. Performer/sonic Interactions in MACHINAL will feature EEG-driven sound sources developed by Italian computer musician Franceso Roberto Dani. FREE and open to the public. Media Contact: Doug Ramsey dramsey@ucsd.edu RSVP requested to Trish Stone tstone@ucsd.edu http://ideas.ucsd.edu/