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Marjorie Prime
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Synopsis
It’s the age of artificial intelligence, and 85-year-old Marjorie — a jumble of disparate, fading memories — has a handsome new companion who’s programmed to feed the story of her life back to her. What would we remember, and what would we forget, if given the chance? In this richly spare, wondrous new play, Jordan Harrison explores the mysteries of human identity and the limits — if any — of what technology can replace.
"Jordan Harrison’s elegant, thoughtful and quietly unsettling drama… keeps developing in your head, like a photographic negative, long after you have seen it...At some point, you realize that it’s been landing skillfully targeted punch after punch, right where it hurts." - The New York Times. "An elegant study of memory as both escape and prison. In Anne Kauffman’s perfectly chilled yet cozy staging, the human parts of Harrison’s smart, lovely play are built to last." - Time Out New York."Jordan Harrison’s play…has all the hallmarks of the best science fiction; it’s clever in conceit, alive with humor, surprising in its turns, and terribly haunting by the time the lights go out." - The New Yorker. "Marjorie Prime…is primarily concerned with something eternal: the way our humanity is shaped and warped by the mysterious ebbs and flows of memory." - Los Angeles Times."Memory is an essential element of life – crucial to thought, feeling, progress, identity. But it also comes into play with particular power and meaning after someone who has been loved dies. And it is this tension between life and death – with memory functioning as connective tissue – that animates Jordan Harrison’s subtly shattering play, Marjorie Prime." - Chicago Sun-Times.
"Jordan Harrison’s elegant, thoughtful and quietly unsettling drama… keeps developing in your head, like a photographic negative, long after you have seen it...At some point, you realize that it’s been landing skillfully targeted punch after punch, right where it hurts." - The New York Times. "An elegant study of memory as both escape and prison. In Anne Kauffman’s perfectly chilled yet cozy staging, the human parts of Harrison’s smart, lovely play are built to last." - Time Out New York."Jordan Harrison’s play…has all the hallmarks of the best science fiction; it’s clever in conceit, alive with humor, surprising in its turns, and terribly haunting by the time the lights go out." - The New Yorker. "Marjorie Prime…is primarily concerned with something eternal: the way our humanity is shaped and warped by the mysterious ebbs and flows of memory." - Los Angeles Times."Memory is an essential element of life – crucial to thought, feeling, progress, identity. But it also comes into play with particular power and meaning after someone who has been loved dies. And it is this tension between life and death – with memory functioning as connective tissue – that animates Jordan Harrison’s subtly shattering play, Marjorie Prime." - Chicago Sun-Times.