AUTOMA

The second of Volcano’s new season of specially-commissioned original short performances in the Solo Duets for the Future series. Performed in the The Cupboard at Volcano Theatre.

Automa is a live interaction between an audience and a robot. It is about the growing humanity of robots, and the potential robotisation of humans under late consumer capitalism. It explores hopes, fears and contemporary realities about Artificial Intelligence and automation, and our emotional responses to machines built in our own image.

James Nash works between the fields of direction, text, dramaturgy and design. He runs the company anorak, which creates short-form micro-theatre. Through anorak he has made two shows – it’s alright everythings okay (a minimal two-hander about toxic positivity and climate grief) and EXPERIMENTAL PROTOTYPE COMMUNITY OF TOMORROW (a speculative fiction show about imagining the future/reimagining the present using a collection of found objects), both presented at the Edinburgh Fringe and Camden People’s Theatre. He has worked as an assistant director on Trust by Falk Richter at the Gate Theatre in 2018 and as a writer for the second series of Boundless Theatre’s fiction podcast Radio Elusia.

James is interested in creating formally-driven work – work that explores the possibilities of space and time and how concentrated versions of each can create a different kind of audience experience.