←Recommendations of Loneliness Was A Pandemic

I saw a stunning, deeply moving production of this harrowing yet hopeful sci-fi play at Theaterlab. I found the naturalistic, often very funny script a brilliant mechanism for examining the components of human relationships. Is all communication manipulation, and if not, what does it mean to be genuine? I loved how visceral the piece felt, especially the on-stage painting, which gave the story a powerful sense of vitality throughout. A thought-provoking, haunting piece of genre theatre!

I am haunted (in a really good way) by this play- I come back to the ideas and philosophies that Haller puts forward. The final image is one I will never forget.

A moving and surprising meditation on the meaning of and necessity for art. Soulless robots discover they need creativity to advance, but the human artist assigned to teach a robot to create art realizes they can't teach creativity to a machine. Art can't exist without emotion and robots can't feel emotion. The ambiguous ending is quite haunting.

An intriguing play about artificial intelligence and art. Can a robot create art? Can it feel? What is the inspiration for why humans create art? The play deftly wrestles with these questions as an artist attempts to teach a robot how to create art. The human artist must also come to terms with a world in which other humans no longer exist. What is art without humanity? 4 out of 5 stars!

There's a specific fruitlessness to our attempts to explain our emotions - where they come from and what they produce. Olivia Haller's thoughtful play wrestles with the way feelings evolve when isolation takes the wheel, and asks us to consider what art begins looks like when there's nothing left for it to describe. Loneliness Was A Pandemic gave me a great deal of comfort (it predates the spread of COVID-19, but is made all the more weighty by it), and I believe it will do the same for others in this unpredictable new world.

In this quietly devastating play, Haller raises a number of existential questions (about human connection, art, the tech-heavy moment we live in), through the conundrum faced by its protagonist. The play also is designed to be impacted by casting, so that gender and ethnicity informs how the dilemma plays out, making it a work in which form (not just text) can serve its ideas about the nature of the human condition.

LONELINESS WAS A PANDEMIC feels like a formulaic dystopian play at first...but, oh, it is so much more than that, and the play is equally surprising and touching as it unravels. While staying engaging and active, the play manages to unpack and examine very deeply the themes of love, art, human connection, and technology. In a world where social media services meant to connect the world drive us into tribes and where the social media profile is beginning to overshadow the individual, Haller has written a futuristic play that feels important for RIGHT NOW.

A heartbreaking meditation on the nature of art, solitude, technology, and utility, LONELINESS WAS A PANDEMIC tackles some very big themes on an intimate scale. Haller does a remarkable job portraying the futility of attempting to explain the value of creativity and importance of empathy. Both timely and timeless, this play gets you invested in its characters in a way that sneaks up on you. Highly recommended!