On April 19 and 20, an original piece of student-produced theater premiered at CUC McConomy. “EMOTE” was a touching, musically thrilling story with a Black-Mirror-esque premise but none of Black Mirror’s dystopic nonsense. It was a joyful, sad story whose emotional center revolved around a robot, and whose catchy musical numbers had me whistling out the door.
The play abounds with Wizard of Oz motifs. Our trusty team of four protagonists consists of Dr. Notarobot (deftly played by Jace “GOAT” Yagoda), an emotionless metal man who only wants to have a heart; Alex (Joshua Malley), a willful but airheaded man who might benefit from some brains; and Noah (played by Winston Perry). (This character was pretty normal.) The Dorothy of this story is June (Nazmee Kamal), the estranged daughter Dr. Lunarie (Kira Cervi), the crazed, work-obsessed doctor who created the “Emote project.” We see that Dr. Lunarie has sacrificed her humanity and relationships to create a nebulous, happiness-producing machine.
These four characters attend a school where a student’s worth is their “happiness score.” June, though plagued by melancholy and deprived of parental affection, gets an admissions offer from a college by virtue of having one of the highest happiness scores on record. Alex and Noah, on the other hand, are two childhood friends with depressingly low happiness scores. These three, plus their oil-drinking chaperone, Dr. Notarobot, go on a cross-country journey (or maybe just cross-state, since the locations are very Pennsylvania-coded) to meet Dr. Lunarie, the mysterious Wizard of Oz to this story.
The group encounters obstacles that force them to consider questions of ethics, relationships, and their purpose in life. When an earthquake tosses June onto the train tracks, Dr. Notarobot must choose whether to save his friend or the three strangers on the opposite track. While he makes the ethically optimal choice here, he learns by the end of the show to prioritize the people he loves.
This show was directed and written by Tim Carullo, a fourth-year BXA student studying vocal performance and computer science, with music by June Spiegel. Tim describes this show as having “a lot of firsts” for the production team, as he and June had never embarked on a project of this scale before.
Tim, who originally came to Carnegie Mellon to study vocal performance, transferred into the BXA program at the start of his second year. He explains that despite the surface-level discrepancy between these studies, he sees programming and music as two skills that require equal amounts of creativity. The interaction between technology and humanity, as well as the beauty of code, are themes deeply intertwined into this work.
June Spiegel is another BXA fourth-year in chemistry and vocal performance, and was the primary composer for the show. Major props must be given to her and the enormous amount of talent present on stage for bringing their characters to life atop a catchy, well-crafted, and coherent musical tapestry.
The show was a good time for all, and it was a privilege to get to see such talent and passion concentrated into a single work.
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