Actuated Acting: The Robots of Heddatron
The origin of certain artistic ideas can often be perplexing. For example, I have never quite figured out why Elizabeth Meriwether felt inspired to write a play about Hedda Gabler (another play by Henrik Ibsen) involving robots, and rainforests, and Rambo-like action sequences. However, when the Boise State theatre department approached me and asked if I, and a small team of makers, would be interested in helping to build mechanical actors for their production of Heddatron, I couldn’t refuse.
Heddatron has five robotic characters, and, as the script specifies, “The robots must be played by robots. Or anything metal that can move on wheels.” Of course, I wanted fully articulating audio-animatronic puppets. However, as is often the case in the real world, timelines and schedules forced a reduction in scope.
After brainstorming with a few friends from the engineering department, we settled on a mobile remote-controlled base, on top of which the theatre department could build bodies for the characters. The human actors controlling the robots would be stationed on a catwalk above the stage. Having very little previous experience with robots, and even less with radio-controlled systems, I learned a great deal through the process of designing one from scratch that had to stand up to a nightly two hour performance.
Another design challenge that came up during construction was finding a way to make the robots talk in the show. It was important that their voices came from where they were standing, and not just speakers to the sides of the stage. I briefly looked into some solutions involving Bluetooth speakers, but ultimately the solution came in the form of professional handheld radios that were placed in the mouths of the robots and were loud enough to be heard from the house.
Unfortunately, I’m not legally allowed to post photos from the production, but, other than a couple tweaks during tech rehearsals, it went off without a hitch. As with many other CTA projects, two of the robots, “Billy” and “Hans”, found a permanent home in the campus Makerlab and became part of our regular exhibit lineup at community events.
Visitors to our tables had the opportunity to try their hand at controlling the bots themselves, and one of them would regularly take off to “wander” the rest of the event space (while I hid out of sight with the controller) – drawing interested parties to our CTA station.
Overall, it was a fantastic opportunity to learn some new technologies, and, as the only non-theatre major in my technical theatre class at the time, it was a great chance to connect with some of my classmates who were actors in the show, as well. I ended up teaching a workshop during the campus’ annual high school theatre festival about creative technology that included the Heddatron robots, 3D printing, and projection mapping.
