backstory: Dystopia
And now for a change of pace… My youngest has been really into dystopia as a genre lately, so over the weekend we went to the see a performance of The Machine Stops, a new play adapted by Kevin Ray from E. M. Forster’s 1909 short story of the same name.
I came across Forster’s short story while in search of dystopian literature about the underground while I was writing my book about art and New York City subway. The show is playful and chilling and… Forster’s story… wow… so frighteningly prescient of the kinds of things that I mourn being lost in our society, like the assumption of connecting with each other in person as Zoom and FaceTime make it all so “easy.” Info about the play is here. It was a pretty short run and closed on Sunday at the Mark O’Donnell Theater at the Actors Fund Arts Center. More about that venue here. Maybe it will resurface at another venue. Hope so, so that you might have a chance to see it. If you’re interested in reading the short story, you can find it here. There’s a film version too, which won best picture back in the 1960s at the still running Trieste science fiction film festival.
Be well.
Tracy Fitzpatrick
Director, Neuberger Museum of Art
Find me on Twitter @tracyfitzart