R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
adapted by Lee Shackleford
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Dax McKeever as Robot 1-9-5 in the Shackleford adaptation of R.U.R.
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots -- sometimes also written as RUR) is the 1920 Czech fantasy play that introduced the word "robot" to the rest of the world. (The Czech word "robota" simply refers to a worker who is made to labor without being paid for the work.)
Karel Čapek's expressionist drama about "artificial people" opened up a new vein of science fiction -- even though it was originally intended as political satire. R.U.R. depicts a world in which mechanical servants are common. The brilliant inventor Rossum made them to do everything we don't want to do: they work in our sewers, they dig in our mines, and of course they are soldiers in our wars. But several in the latest generation of Robots have begun to show subtle signs of independent thought ... and hostility toward the people who made them.
About Karel Čapek
Karel Čapek (1890-1938) was a Czech
playwright, novelist,
and essayist. In the
first half of the
20th century, he was the
most famous author
in Czechoslovakia. He
is best known as
the author of two brilliant
satirical plays --
The Insect Play, written with his brother Josef in 1921,
and of course R.U.R., also in 1921. Both plays express Čapek's
criticism of technological
and materialistic
excesses.
His later play The Makropoulos Secret (1923), a satire on man's search for immortality,
formed the basis
of Janácek's 1925 opera
The Makropoulos Affair. As a second world war began to seem more and more inevitable, Čapek wrote increasingly of the dangers and waste of war and totalitarianism. His three philosophical novels --Hordubal (1934), Meteor (1934), and An Ordinary Life (1935)-- are all examples of this, but his 1938 work Power and Glory is perhaps his most powerful expression of these ideas.
He did not abandon science-fiction during this time. His 1936 novel The War with the Newts is often cited by lovers of satire as their favorite Čapek work -- sometimes as their favorite book in the world! The book shares many themes with R.U.R. -- most obviously, an exploited source of labor turning on its masters. Curiously, The War with the Newts also anticipates -- to an almost eerie degree -- aspects of the five films in the original Planet of the Apes series.
Čapek suffered from spinal problems
almost all of his
life, and that frailty
of frame would help
to overcome him in the
end. When the Nazis
threatened Czechoslovakia
he refused to flee
his beloved Prague, fully
realizing that staying
would mean certain
death since his name
was near the top of
the Gestapo's "hit
list." But his
poor health proved
even more deadly than
the invaders -- Karel
Čapek died, only 48 years old, not at the hands of the Nazis but of pneumonia.
His brother Josef was arrested by the Gestapo and died in the Terezin Concentration Camp in 1945.
A perhaps odd but interesting note: A touching account of Karel Čapek's premature death is enshrined on the Radio Prague Virtual Cemetery site, honoring the great Czech luminaries of bygone days.
His family in the Czech Republic maintains an excellent web site devoted to his life and works. All of the site's content is offered in several languages, including, naturally, Czech -- with the English version starting here.