HUMAN MUSEUM

April 12 – May 5, 2024
By Miyoko Conley
Directed by Randy Baker
  • 1020 Connecticut Avenue NW
    Washington DC 20036
DIGITAL PROGRAM

As robots on Earth finalize a museum exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary of humanity’s extinction, an unexpected radio transmission disrupts everything they thought they knew. This darkly comic new play delves into our legacy and who will carry it forward.

The production will transform a two-story former retail store into Miyoko Conley’s visionary world: a living, breathing museum about the last days of humanity, envisioned by its robot curators through the lens of twentieth century disaster films. Audiences enter the museum lobby and can explore the gift shop, several exhibits and the bar before settling into their seats to watch the 90 minute play.

“promisingly metafictional… with a winningly committed cast”

THE WASHINGTON POST

This project is produced in partnership with Lerner Enterprises and The Golden Triangle BID and with support provided by the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities.

FEATURING

Ayanna Fowler
Bri Houtman
Rebecca Husk
Ixchel
Jennifer Knight
Aron Spellane

Understudies

Madison Bacino
Terresita Edwards
Sam Fromkin
Lisette Gabrielle

Designers

Set Gavin Moiser
Assistant Scenic Designer and Museum Graphic Designer Sophia Olivar
Costumes Ashlynn Ludwig
Associate Costume Designer Tori Niemiec 
Lighting Hailey LaRoe
Sound Ian Vespermann
Props Rooster Skylar Sultan
Assistant Props Designer Andrew Reilley
Video Kylos Brannon
Associate Video Designer Benjamin Pallansch

STAFF

Dramaturg Divinia Shorter
Production Manager Germar Townsend
Technical Director Christian Sullivan
Master Electrician Libby Henshaw
Stage Manager Sophia Menconi
Assistant Stage Manager Natasha Sánchez
2nd ASM Mikayla Smith
Production Assistant Ainsley Priest

PRODUCERS

Randy Baker
Jenny McConnell Frederick

MEDIA

PRESS

“Consistent with Rorschach Theatre’s adventurously immersive productions, the company’s latest, Human Museum by Miyoko Conley, engages audiences in playful conversation with its themes well before the show even begins.”
METRO WEEKLY
“The premise of Human Museum is incredibly original, fascinating, and prescient. It remains grounded in the gripping reality of an all-too-possible “What if?” scenario… it manages to infuse fun and delight into this imagined future, with the heart of the story being a loveable crew of robots who are more human than they think.”
DC Theatre Arts
“The premise will make you think. The director’s deft touch will make you wonder, and the actors’ stellar performances just might make you reconsider your stance on robots”
MD Theatre Guid
“An ensemble effort of the most appetizing kind, Rorschach’s staging of “Human Museum” throws an attic’s worth of ephemera into realizing Conley’s idiosyncratic futurescape, with a look and feel so agreeably cluttered there’s almost no distinguishing between props, costumes, set pieces and makeup design. It’s all arrayed in the quirky service of a story that’s as interested in the act of archiving as in the meaning of the archive: To collect, to hold, to interpret, Conley’s wonderfully curious robots seem to be saying, is inevitably to merge the subject into the self.”
WASHINGTON POST