My Husband, My Robot, My Lover, & My Husband's Robot Lover

“My Husband, My Robot, My Lover & My Husband's Robot Lover" explores the ever-evolving relationship between humans and technology. Our musical follows Desmond, a PleasureBot in the heart of the near-future robot renaissance ‚”Cleveland, Ohio” who believes that he is actually in love with his human client, Jack, only to discover he may have been built for an entirely different, and more nefarious, purpose. Desmond’s affection for Jack is only one thread in a complex romantic web. Desmond‚Äôs secret human operator, Natasha, only dates robots, until she falls in love with Jack‚Äôs wife, Dr. Maggie Newman. Desmond‚Äôs arrival threatens not only Maggie‚Äôs marriage, but her dental hygienist robot, Flora, who, fearing she‚Äôs become obsolete, decides to upgrade herself into a PleasureBot. Meanwhile, Benji, the CEO of the Cleveland Robotics Company and Natasha‚Äôs ex-boyfriend, has an ingenious idea for humans to compete with robots in the bedroom: a robot penis. This ensemble madcap musical comedy is ‚ÄúEx Machina‚Äù meets ‚ÄúThe Book of Mormon‚Äù meets ‚ÄúA Little Night Music.‚Äù “...My Husband’s Robot Lover” was greatly inspired by my experience working with Aura, the AI humanoid robot host of Sphere Las Vegas. I was hired on a team to create the personality and write scripts for Aura, and we weren’t the only ghost in this machine. Because Aura wasn’t ready for fully autonomous interactions with guests, improv actors were hired as the robot’s secret operators. Meanwhile, my boss was a technohumanist who believed it was humanity’s evolutionary destiny to transform into robots. The whole experience was sickeningly dystopian and spectacularly absurd, the perfect ingredients for a musical! So why the frame of a satirical madcap bisexual romcom? Well, for one thing, Steven and I are both queer men whose life partners are women (what some have described as ‘male lesbians’). We are equally fascinated and terrified by the future that’s emerging right before our eyes, and the most truthful way we know how to explore these contradictory extremes is through laughter. We want to delight and surprise our audience at every turn - one minute, they’re laughing at the absurdity of a dental hygienist trying to become a sexbot, and then suddenly they’re genuinely moved by a sexbot’s search for meaning. We love musical theater because it allows a story to go to all these different emotional and tonal places, and we want to fill our show with spectacle, dance, sharp satire, and provocative questions about the relationship between AI and humanity - humans with robots, robots becoming humans, and humans becoming robots.