Manufacturing Mischief

Manufacturing Mischief, the New York premiere of a satirical play by Pedro Reyes that features puppet characters based on Noam Chomsky, Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, Elon Musk and Tiny Trump.

The work was conceived as part of Reyes residency as the inaugural Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology.

Using comedy to address political discourse and the dilemmas that artificial intelligence and late capitalism pose, the play serves as a critique of new technologies for automation, such as self-driving cars and robots that replace humans in the workforce, as well as the class conflicts that ensue when technology eliminates jobs.

It deals with issues of technology, ideology and the current political climate from a critical perspective, while also serving as entertainment and speaking both to scholars and a broader audience alike.