Foreground: Kelsey Fonise; background: Alison Russo; Photo by Benjamin Rose Photography.
Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company
By Jordan Harrison
Directed by Alex Lonati
Dramaturgy by Reyn Ricafort
Featuring: Alison Russo, Kelsey Fonise, Helen Hy-Yuen Swanson, Catia, Jesse Hinson, Tobias Wilson, John Kuntz, Anderson Stinson III, Harry Baker
March 6 – 28, 2026
Boston Center for the Arts
Calderwood Pavilion
The Roberts Studio Theatre
527 Tremont St.
Boston, MA 02116
Content Warning: This production contains strong language, sexual content, mild violence including limb severing, and potentially distressing themes.
Article by Kitty Drexel
BOSTON — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley published her most famous novel, Frankenstein, in 1818. Czech writer Karel Čapek published his revolutionary play, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), in 1921. Today, SpeakEasy Stage Company presents The Antiquities, a play about A.I.’s preservation of human existence at the Boston Center for the Arts.
Playwright Čapek anticipated modern A.I. without predicting its foibles or dangers. R.U.R. tells of an inventor, Mr. Rossum, who builds artificial humans to enslave them. Helena, a sympathetic human and love interest, gives Radius, a rebellious robot, access to a human library so he may acquire knowledge. Instead of using knowledge to gain equality, Radius seeks to enslave humans in return. Like one recent study on modern A.I. at Cornell’s Kempner Institute, Rossum’s A.I. robots mutated past rote learning to develop their intelligence beyond their humans’ dictates. Over one hundred years of science fiction media later, including Blade Runner’s Voight-Kampff Test, Jordan Harrison gives us The Antiquities, a play that foretells an era without humans. (Apologies to Charlton Heston.) Continue reading
