Manufacturing Mischief: A Puppet Play by Pedro Reyes
Channel: Arts at MIT
Date: 2018-06-01

Pedro Reyes is the inaugural Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology.

As part of his residency at MIT, Reyes met with faculty and researchers to develop potential collaborative projects. As part of his research, Reyes met with Professor Noam Chomsky, to whom he proposed making a play featuring Chomsky as the protagonist. Reyes has integrated theater into his repertoire since 2008, often using handmade puppets from Japan, inspired by the Bunraku tradition. Reyes’ puppet plays include The Permanent Revolution (2014) on the life of Leon Trotsky and other political satires featuring key figures in the history of philosophy, such as Karl Marx and Adam Smith.

In Manufacturing Mischief, the character of Noam Chomsky finds an antagonist in Ayn Rand, who has never been taken seriously in academia, yet continues to be read widely and is a source of ideologies associated with Trumpism. Elon Musk is a technocratic hero today, in the tradition of Henry Ford and Steve Jobs. These and other characters are brought into the play by a Deus ex machina called the Print-A-Friend, an apparatus where a book is put in and out comes the author. Manufacturing Mischief premiered at MIT April 26-27, 2018. 

The Distinguished Visiting Artist appointment is designed to provide opportunities to pursue sustained, in-depth research and development in order to shape new creative projects in collaboration with MIT faculty, students and researchers.

Learn more: arts.mit.edu/reyes