Salvador Kent
If a previous historical epoch had seen DRONE, it might have looked like magic. In 2026, it just feels like the future. This is an hour of intoxicating, poetic sci-fi that is pushing the boundaries of performance, projection and the poetry of machines.
The technology used primarily is a neural network — a computer model inspired by the patterns of the human brain. It means that performer Gladstone Mahib is often projected onto, developed from, identity shifted by a computer. Mahib is genderless as he goes through the texts many characters.
At times, gender is imposed onto him — during a sex scene the neural network projects female breasts onto Mahib’s body. At other times he plays an old man, a coffee machine, a young woman. His voice is altered character by character but is always multi-faceted. Not as cliche as robotic, it is deliberately mechanical, but still perhaps human.
This feeds into the creator’s key philosophical influences in the work – cybercore. Described as ‘a thesaurus of cyberpunk’, cybercore is the umbrella term for the text’s philosophical and aesthetic influences which range from old Japanese poetry to grumpy philosopher Nick Land.
These philosophical influences aren’t on the surface of the text, this isn’t a philosophy lecture, but the spirit of them is all over this. This is a vision of the future that on first glance is simply built on tropes but on further inspection is built on tropes, and that’s its brilliance. At a time when LLM’s are being fed swathes of human experience to construct themselves, it becomes a smart speculation to imagine a future where conscious machines have chosen to present themselves through cybercore.
And what is it that defines consciousness? Is it love? Is that really sex? If machines were to be conscious, would we dominate them? Would their domination be robophobic? Would they be tied to corporations? Would they be let free? Essential questions in the best cyperpunk-ish science fiction, and adequately dealt with in this dense but always entertaining hour, featuring a futuristic, slippery performance from Gladstone Mahib.
It’s not quite theatre, it feels further along than that. A little bit like Spielberg’s claim there isn’t “science fiction, but science eventuality”. Perhaps this one is a little too plotted to reach that ceiling. But it will be the most intriguing hour you can catch this Fringe in the questions it asks frankly about our future, and the projections it chooses to make. It is also very entertaining. It deserves sell-out audiences, go catch it.
Recommended Drink: There’s something very visceral about drinking a coffee in this one given one of the plot points is Drone f—cking a coffee machine. Drink a coffee!
You can catch DRONE every day until 31 August at Pleasance Courtyard (Pleasance Two) at 12.00 (One Hour). Tickets are available online through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Issy Cory
Isobel Jacob
Esme Davis
