A Dead Body in Taos

Product Information

She’s not talking to a corpse, but a mechanical representation of her mother aged thirty-five, into which her mother’s memories, emotions and biographical data have been uploaded. Artificial Intelligence has been taken to its technological, moral and unsettling extreme and we are invited to question the nature of death and human consciousness.

We flashback through Kath’s life to learn more about her, and the action touches on the gap that exists between mother and daughter. But before we have much of a chance, we are whisked back to Kath’s student days where there is much talk about the 1968 protests, Vietnam, Cambodia and changing the world.Sam hasn’t spoken to her mother Kath for three years when she learns that she’s been found dead in the New Mexico desert.

We are now able to accept credit/debit card donations directly from this site, with the security of PayPal.In Charlie Josephine’s Cowbois, a group of women is left alone in a small town while their husbands are away. Rachel Bagshaw’s staging – for Fuel, the non-fossilised, ever-burning-bright production company – is exemplary. Initially I thought that this would be a story about Sam and her anger at her selfish mother, who placed her into a boarding school in London and left for the States whilst having ‘some sort of breakdown’. There are short scenes where Sam spends time with AI Kath that begin to address this, but it is overlooked in favour of more flashbacks, or time with a lawyer disputing a will. Sam (Gemma Lawrence) hasn’t been able to forgive her mother Kath (Eve Ponsonby) for half-abandoning her as a teenager.

It sees a precocious young artist become part of the American student protest movement of the 1960s, fall in love, suffer tragedy and have a child with whom she has a tumultuous relationship. Dave made his (somewhat unwilling) stage debut via audience participation on the day before Covid lockdowns began. Or is this a story of financial manipulation in which Kath has been persuaded to leave all her millions to a “future life” company promising eternal, virtual existence? With direction from Rachel Bagshaw, the multi-roling is done with expertise, giving each character a truthful yet bizarre mysticism. She has left all her money (bitcoin, presumably) to the institute and taken advantage of the facilities to become a digital version of herself.Flawed love is an underlying theme: Kath is drawn to the cult-like foundation promising eternal digital life in hope of being given a second chance at parental (as well as romantic) love, which bears a resemblance to Caryl Churchill’s A Number. His tension between professionalism and his personal response to the case is subtly but powerfully enacted. The scenes are acted against a backdrop of full-stage projections – crowds, paintings, news footage – which add little apart from visual clutter. David Farr’s compelling new play is both an unsettling science fiction and an intimate study of loss and bereavement, examining how artificial intelligence could alter our understanding of death, consciousness and the soul. Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes.