When Days Fly

Dig, if you will, the picture of me having breakfast in front of Wink's, squinting at the ocean through sunglasses as I eat.

The only problem with this picture is that it requires leaving the beach followed by three hours in the car to make it the Continental for lunch.

Despite dire warnings about the UCI bike race, I have zero trouble getting back into town or my neighborhood and parking spaces abound.

Dream, if you can, a restaurant full to the rafters of customers, far too many of them with fussy young children. Our trio is fortunate enough to snag a table on the breezy patio while most of the squawking and food throwing is going on inside.

I should be ashamed to admit how much I enjoy a plate of dirty chips - housemade potato chips covered in jack and cheddar cheese, bacon and chives - and sips of boozy limeade, but I'm not.

For the second time today, I have absolutely no problem getting where I'm going despite seeing signs saying, "Bike Race in Progress" at several intersections.

Decide, if you choose, like a friend and I did, to meet at Toast for a fried dinner - sliders, fries and a seafood bucket - to trade tales of the last fortnight's beach trips (hers and mine), miscommunications (ditto) and soul-searching (always).

Driving over, the streets are noticeably empty, no doubt due to media fear-mongering about coming downtown. A pity, really.

Conceive, if you try, of a thought-provoking two-actor play called "Uncanny Valley," which is the term coined for the human tendency to react negatively to robots that seem human (see: "The Polar Express" movie - disconcerting, right?).

Produced by 5th Wall and performed at the tiny Hatt Theater out in the hinterlands (driving west on Patterson for what seemed like hours, my friend says, "Where are we? Canada?"), the play addresses the question of what it means to be human ("In your mind's eye, how old are you?").

And, more specifically, what does it mean to be human and so filthy rich that you can keep yourself alive indefinitely by having your life experiences and memories uploaded into a robot who looks like you at whatever age you choose for it to (34 in this case).

Alexander Sapp is brilliant as the robot being coached on human behavior by the maternalistic scientist played by the reliably-strong Jacqueline Jones ("We're a skittish species. That's how we've lasted so long.").

With the addition of each component - another arm, torso, legs, he becomes more human-like - but it's his early, robotic like voice and distinct learning curve that provide many of the early laughs while endearing him to the audience. This is Julian A.

A real relationship develops between the two and after much coaching from the patient Jones, he receives the download from the dying man (Julian B). The result is the new creature, Julian C, an amalgam of human and a robot.

Playwright Thomas Gibbons took the stage afterwards with director Morrie Piersol and the two actors to talk with the audience about the provocative nature of the play's subject matter, inspired by a National Geographic article he'd read at his dentist's office.

I don't know that an article on artificial intelligence would've grabbed me the same way, but the resulting play certainly did. Are we merely our consciousness? Can it be replicated for another body?

The play raises some hard questions, all the more significant for how close apparently we are to this sort of thing becoming, well, a thing. Only for the 1%, mind you, but that's even scarier since all the "immortals" will be the super-rich.

It may be time to start worrying about the Donald doing something like this.

Or, better yet, it's definitely time to go see "Uncanny Valley" because this is the very best kind of theater: beautifully acted, subtly directed and forcing us to look at some hard issues of personal ethics and technology.

As Gibbons pointed out in the talkback, algorithms already shape our daily lives. Should they be used to shape the minds and personalities of robots to achieve immortality?

Call me the skittish type, but you can probably guess how the woman without a cell phone or TV is going to weigh in on this.

Real life in progress. It's enough for me.

School of the Intense

Nothing like a little death in the afternoon.

A friend and I made the trek out Patterson Avenue to the West End to the Hatt Theater to see "Gidion's Knot," an award-winning play about which I knew nothing.

Walking in to the theater felt like walking into a schoolroom, complete with school desks in front of the audience's seats.

What we were too slow to realize was that those desks were seats for the show, instead ending up in the back row of the tiny theater.

The two-actor play dealt with a parent-teacher conference after the woman's son was suspended.

Both actresses played their roles to the hilt, one inhabiting the distraught and angry mother and the other the reluctant, upset teacher responsible for the 5th grader's suspension.

Over the course of the next 80 minutes, we were caught up in issues of bullying, homosexuality, suicide, the responsibility of parenting and how much creativity is too much.

As if that weren't enough, there was also the unbearable discussion of putting a beloved pet down.

Honestly, it was far more than I'd been prepared to deal with on a muggy, Sunday afternoon.

Fortunately, there were occasional moments of levity, albeit dark-tinged, serving as much-needed release valves.

When the teacher admits to having changed careers after years in advertising, the mother shoots back unsympathetically, "Aw, did you turn 40 and have a midlife crisis?"

Likewise, her caustic observation, "You're not a liar, which is surprising given your background in advertising."

By the end of the play, I was mentally exhausted by the heartbreak that had been the subject of their "discussion," almost as if it had happened to me.

Just like the characters, I felt wrung out by the fever pitch of the unresolved situations that had been sustained throughout the play as we applauded two stellar performances.

And isn't that what really good theater is supposed to do?