RADIO FRANKENSTEIN
Women and men above you, around you, you see only their eyes, the faces hidden behind the green masks. They will cut you. They will hurt you. Your blood will be stopped. You will not feel anything. You will live. You will wake up as someone else.
What makes you what you are? What makes me what I am? Are you a human because you have a heart? Because you have eyes, a brain? Because you walk upright, because desire drives your coupling? Because you can read, write your name, remember, because you think you know you exist?
Are you this man because you have this knee, this pain in the shoulder, this heart, this love for this vanilla pudding, this faith in this God, this memory of this grandmother?
Does it matter where your hand comes from? Your kidney? Your stomach? Your words? Your singing?
They will anaesthetize you. They will dismember you. They will throw away the superfluous, replace the bad pieces, exchange old for new. They will cut, they will communicate in clipped commands, they will make split-second decisions. Razor-sharp scalpels will sever muscles, tendons, blood vessels, nerve fibres, neurons.
Blood will be stopped, cleaned, exchanged. You will receive bespoke organs from Dr Frankenstein. Joints, designed, created, oiled for an eternity. What do we do with those eyes, those lips, those hanging shoulders? Take out this smoky lung, print out a new one and put it in! Out with the much too weak heart, give me current, so that the new one starts up!
You will wake up as a new human being. Resurrect from the decay of life, rejuvenated, beautified, much better, much newer.
Do not be afraid: we will find a suitable body for your head.
Do not be afraid: we know today what we did not know yesterday.
Do not be afraid: you will not die. We only cut parts of you, and replace them with new ones. We keep your soul, and transplant it into a new existence.
RADIO FRANKENSTEIN, a theatre and an art project, examines today's scientific and technical possibilities of modification, manipulation and creation of human bodies, projects this into the near future and asks how these possibilities and their implementations relate to fairness.
RADIO FRANKENSTEIN asks which scientific achievements are emerging today and in the near future for the modification, improvement and enhancement of the human body, its genetic make-up and its development, and what “price in fairness” this will exact: who gains access to “improvements”, and at whose expense? Who loses? On what grounds? Who benefits? Based on which rights?
Collaborating with the JRC / SciArt project has been significant for us on several levels. Drawing a meaningful approach from the enormous body of scientific material, data and new developments, in partnership with the scientists, was and remains an important learning process. That approach had to leave room for ethical reflection, and in turn, for artistic reflection.
To host RADIO FRANKENSTEIN at your theatre, festival or cultural venue, contact the production.