a multimedia/theater collaboration

"The Adding Machine" is an innovative interdisciplinary, inter-institutional collaboration.

Event Info

The Adding Machine was a sucess! The show opened on March 6th, 2007 and ran through March 11th. Please take time to read the reviews of the show on this page and under the links page and make sure to check out the video diary and production updates in the journal.

The project will join students, faculty, and staff from the Department of Theatre Arts and the Multimedia Program at Bradley University with students, faculty, and staff from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and the University of Central Florida (USA) to collaboratively develop, rehearse, and present a fully mediatized production (integrating virtual scenery, broadcast video via Internet 2, recorded video, avatar performers, photographs, graphics and sound) of Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine.

Written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Elmer Rice in 1923, The Adding Machine is a funny and slightly nightmarish look at advancing technology and its effect on human relationships. The play chronicles the life of Zero, a hapless cog spinning aimlessly in the corporate world, who, after 25 years of service, is replaced by a machine.

This production is a mediatized conceptualization of Elmer Rice‘s 1923 play written in seven scenes.

Scheduled for performance in March 2007 as part of Bradley University Theatre’s performance season, students and faculty from all four institutions will work together on a peer level over the year to conceptualize, problem-solve, establish methods, determine best practices, develop proof-of-concepts supporting the integration of technology into a live performance event, and create the mediatized and theatrical design elements that will be utilized in rehearsal and presentation.

This collaboration will be facilitated through a process of joint decision-making and interdependent critical thinking, with a hierarchy appropriate to our disciplines, and shared responsibility by the students and faculty for the process and final outcome of the collaboration.

Kenyon and Associates Architects

The Department of Theatre Arts and the Multimedia Program graciously thank Les Kenyon of Kenyon and Associates Architects for his generous support of this project.

Kenyon and Associates Architects is an official sponsor of The Adding Machine.

The Iona Group

The Department of Theatre Arts and the Multimedia program graciously thank The Iona Group for their generous support of this project.

The Iona Group is an official sponsor of The Adding Machine.

Various software packages such as Troika Tronix Isadora and the open source project Processing will be used to make the theater come alive. These programs will assist in combining multiple audio and video feeds and creating stunning visual affects to create a very realistic virtual environment.

Want to know more?

Here's some more info on the play...

The Adding Machine is a play that invites a film-noir style of production. Rice’s view of business and technology in this play is a decidedly negative one. People are so easily replaced by technology, until, toward the end, people become almost entirely unnecessary. For a play written in 1923, that’s quite something. Rice obviously looked upon advances in technology as something that would be man’s undoing. Rice’s socialist views in this play are consistent with the time he lived in, but, interestingly, The Adding Machine is possibly more relevant than ever.

The Plot

The Adding Machine is the story of Mr. Zero, an employee at a Macy’s-like department store, whose job it is to add columns of sales figures. Zero, who has been in the same job for 25 years, is expecting a promotion, but when he is fired, he kills his boss. Mr. Zero is the perfect anti-hero – someone who is unable to understand the extent to which his inability to learn from the mistakes he himself has made. This inability to learn results in many negative consequences for Mr. Zero over the course of his life. From his marriage to a soul-killing wife, to a violent act he perpetrates at a baseball game, to his inability to declare his love for a co-worker, Mr. Zero’s life consists of a litany of missed opportunities and disappointments.
(Joseph Brown, www.centerstagechicago.com)