Most people don’t like to think about death. The inevitable end to each journey, the great equalizer of us all, is rarely popular dinner conversation. As opposed to viewing death as a natural companion to life, our culture often considers it to be the great enemy. We refuse to say the word in favor of phrases like “passed away”, an alarming number of us fail to plan our end of life care, and we tend to idolize centenarians while we ask for the secret to longevity. At the same time, “anti-aging” products are advertised to people in their twenties. Milestone birthdays are ignored or repeated. Headlines boast that “age is nothing but a number” while also insisting that every age (other than twenty) is the new twenty, ad nauseum. It seems that everyone wants to live longer, but no one wants to age.
Amidst these contradictory attitudes about human life, the shelf-life of technology steadily decreases as we eagerly discard the “old” in favor of the new. We invest in smart phones and kitchen appliances knowing full well that by next season they will be obsolete. Then we trade up for the newest gadget as soon as we can, despite the value our previously purchased items still have or the monetary cost. Unfortunately, this attitude is not reserved solely for inanimate objects. We consistently witness men divorcing their first wives for younger women and companies forcing out employees when they reach a certain age. As painful as it is to feel discarded, imagine if we were created knowing that it was an inevitability? What if our entire purpose was to serve someone who would abandon us as soon as a new upgrade was released?
Welcome to the world of Claire and Oliver – outdated Helperbots that live alone after newer models replace them. They have very different attitudes about their situations. Oliver believes that his owner will one day come back for him while Claire has foresworn any type of connection to others after watching the dissolution of her owner’s marriage. Yet, these two find themselves on a journey that gives them a new purpose after their old one is taken from them. They are looking for answers. They are looking for new experiences. What they are not looking for is a surprising connection that challenges their beliefs about life and purpose. Perhaps life isn’t as simple as “out with the old and in with the new.”
Any person who has tried on their mother’s wedding dress or worn their father’s watch knows that sometimes items have value because of their age, not in spite of them. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have living grandparents likely know the delight of listening to their stories and the urge to record them before they are lost. We have vinyl collectors, bookstore owners, vintage fashion boutiques, and silent film buffs whose joy in their fields is unabating, no matter how fast society moves in a different direction. In the end, value is inherent where connection is present, regardless of if those connections are made with pets, loved ones, old-fashioned hobbies, or inanimate objects. Try telling a child (or a twenty something in some cases) that a stuffed animal has no value simply because it’s old and one will be soundly rebuked.
Maybe Happy Ending reminds us that everything must come to an end – employment, relationships, and even our lives. It also challenges us to find that “happy” or create it for ourselves, regardless of what society may say. Maybe it’s reconnecting with a loved one. Maybe it’s seeing something you’ve never seen before. Maybe you knew what you wanted…until you took that first step outside of your room. Some find it brave to take that step. Some find it naïve. This musical reminds us that all journeys may end in the same place, but how we walk the path and who we choose to walk it with belongs to us. We create our own happy endings.
“What if we wrote a show about what it means to be human and told the story through robots?”
When book-writer and lyricist Hue Park emailed his writing partner Will Aronson suggesting such a concept, the pair never batted an eye at the irony of using sci-fi to explore the gift of everyday life.
“Now that everyone’s spending more and more time looking at their cell phones, spending time online, and not actually talking to other people face to face, I feel like we are getting more and more used to not expressing our emotions as much as we used to,” Park shares. “We are slowly turning into robots, in a way. So I think that was one of the first inspirations to write the show.” Park says this inspiration initially sparked when he heard the lyrics to a Damon Albarn song, “Everyday Robots,” talking about how we are all trying to find belonging in our cell phones.
Despite its futuristic premise, Maybe Happy Ending is not so much about looking towards the future and the dangers therein, but about valuing interpersonal opportunities here and now.
“I don’t think we’re saying technology is bad,” Park says. “I think we’re asking, ‘What’s the most magical experience that we get to have as humans, when we are only on this planet for a limited time?’ We felt the robots were more human than us, so we let them teach us about the things we’d forgotten about life.”
Part of the reason behind choosing robots was that the characters could look at the human experience with a fresh eye, viewing emotions and connection with wonder.
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Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.
—Johnny Griffin
Oliver, the Helperbot 3 at the heart of Maybe Happy Ending, is obsessed with jazz. He naturally has his favorite artists and recordings, as well as a subscription to a monthly jazz magazine. He even gives regular lectures to HwaBoon, his plant-roommate. He has made jazz a part of his daily life. While the audience learns early on that Oliver’s former owner taught him everything he knows, the robot’s continued fascination with jazz seems to have become an authentic expression of his selfhood. So what is it about this distinctly American style of music that lights a fire within this Korean robot?
The Alliance’s unofficial in-house jazz expert, Director of Education and Associate Artistic Director Chris Moses, is the perfect person to answer this question. “I see a lot of myself in Oliver,” he admits. Like the robot, he is always ready with a brief-yet-detailed overview of the art form’s history and place in American culture. With roots in African-American musical traditions, jazz exploded into being the country’s foremost popular music genre in the 1920s. Even after its heyday, jazz has both accompanied and grew alongside American culture for the last century.
Even still, despite its place as one of the few genuinely American art forms and its enormous popular appeal around the world, it has steadily fallen out of vogue over the last few decades. In this way, Moses suggested, it can feel obsolete to the mainstream. Similarly, as an outdated Helperbot model, Oliver is clinging to the belief – and to the need to believe – that he still has plenty to offer the world, while finding joy in something from his own past (the music that his former owner cherished) as well as something from our collective cultural past (jazz itself).
Perhaps the most fascinating contradiction in Oliver’s passion for jazz is the chasm between man and robot. “It’s such a human art form. So much of jazz relies on the interconnectedness of the musicians,” Moses says, citing Duke Ellington as an example of a composer writing entire pieces specifically for his players (such as “Concerto for Cootie”). By that same token, improvisation is at the core of the genre, something entirely at odds with the strict binary that we typically associate with robots and technology.
Oliver is a robot, but he also has a deep and sincere love for an intangible human creation. Both of these truths, seemingly contradictory, exist in harmony. It is fitting, then, that jazz is an art form in which contradictions flourish, where classical training can find a perfect partner in human instinct and exuberant joy can mingle with an indescribable melancholy. The music itself has evolved into so many subgenres that the range of what can legitimately be called jazz is as immense and diverse as humankind. It’s a kind of music for everybody – including robots.
For tickets to Maybe Happy Ending call 404.733.5000 or visit alliancetheatre.org/maybe.