A convent of amusing nuns, God, a playlist of Madonna and one Sister that doesn’t look quite right. That’s because a robot has walked into the convent. What could go wrong? In Electric Rosary, nuns meet technology and faith clashes with the scientific. At its core, this play examines what it means to be human through exploring something that is not. This robot nun exists in a world where such machines are human-looking, a world that doesn’t feel too distant from our own, where a robot nun can pass as believable and real.

Personally, I’ve always found the relationship between technology and God fascinating, and Electric Rosary (By Tim Foley) explores this parallel from a new perspective. Here is a female insight on AI technology, raising questions of motherhood and female relationships through the unusual space of a nunnery. Attending a rehearsal for Electric Rosary last week, I spoke to director Raffaella Sera. “I was actively looking for a play that had an all-female and non-binary cast” she comments: “I think we have such a wealth of female and non-binary actors in Cambridge”. Clearly, this production makes use of the best of this talent. From watching rehearsal, I could tell that the connection between this cast was strong. For a play about what makes us human, the chemistry was real and the dynamic was, ironically, nothing short of electric.

“There will be lots of Madonna, which is something I feel very strongly about”

“I usually joke that god sent me Electric Rosary”, confesses Raffaella as she describes why she chose to put on this production. “I was just browsing in Foyles and I saw this play and thought wow that looks weird”. Weird is definitely what it seems: if anyone is struggling to accept technology, then it would probably be nuns, creating a collision between a place of stability and the impacts of scientific advancement. But this space is a fascinating one. As Rafaella comments, relating partly to her experience at Newnham: “Nunneries are interesting places for women, I wanted to examine the interactions that would arise in such a strange space”.

The nuns all have different problems of their own to deal with, and this is a play that uses such a setting to show how all of us in times of challenge come together in different ways. “All of these characters are facing different challenges and finding ways to cope that are not necessarily their faith”, explains Raffaella. “They don’t necessarily find answers in their faith”. Faith is challenged, but it also appears grounding for these characters in a time of change. It comes into conjunction with technology, but it can also adapt to it.

“An important feminist contribution to the rumblings of a dystopian future”

She continues: “My favourite nun, if one is allowed to have a favourite nun, is Theresa (Flossie Adrian), who guides Mary (the robot nun, played by Charlie Scott-Haynes) to prayer and tries to explain to her what prayer is. She’s also very into Madonna’s music.” Music also plays a huge part within Rafaella’s vision, as “there will be lots of Madonna, which is something I feel very strongly about”. She talks of Hildegard of Bingen, the German saint from the middle ages who is known as one of the most important female figures in the Church and one of the earliest composers. The nunnery becomes a space of female creativity, and it is interesting that in Electric Rosary it is the music, much like for Hildegard of Bingen, that becomes symbolic of faith. Music also seems to become something distinctly human, played to Mary the Robot as she learns to become more like her fellow nuns.

Equally, this is also a play about technology, and how we understand our own humanity in relation to it. If a robot can look identical to a human, and can replicate one emotionally, then what is it that really separates us? And are we becoming inseparable from it? Raffaella comments on her own relationship with technology and her own fears: “I always thought of myself as a bit of a luddite because I really do not understand technology, but also what frightens me about this play is that it’s not that far from where we are now. I like to see the convent as only a couple years away. Maybe we won’t have robots like Mary looking freakishly human in a couple of years, but we already talk to Siri all the time. We talk to Alexa. We are with our screens way more than we are with other people…I do hope it helps people consider, or reconsider their relationship with technology”.

“Plus I love the aesthetic”, laughs Raffaella, and I can’t help but agree. Along with the visuals however, Electric Rosary is an important feminist contribution to the rumblings of a dystopian future, and a play not to be missed.

Electric Rosary is playing at Corpus Playroom, 14th to 18th February, 7pm