‘Do you want to live forever?
YES or NO.’
Polly and Owen have nailed it. Successful in their careers and wildly in love with each other, they feel ready to take on the world.
But when a mysterious new technology, promising a break from the daily grind, creeps into everyone’s phones, their world is turned upside down. As the line between physical and digital rapidly dissipates, Polly and Owen are forced to question whether their definitions of reality and freedom are the same.
Girl in the Machine is a disturbing but compassionate vision of our potential digital future, and what it might mean for ‘life’ as we know it. The play premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 2017, directed by Traverse Artistic Director Orla O’Loughlin.
‘A sinister story of love and addiction that revisits age old themes whilst thrusting them into a dystopian digital future… thanks to Smith’s cut to the chase dialogue, the horrors of what that could ultimately entail is are viscerally realised’
— Edinburgh Evening News
‘Haunting and prescient… Smith invests this world with a rare intensity… there is a solid emotional base to the piece; it has a real authenticity, while the encroaching technological nightmare rings horribly true’
— The Stage
‘A gripping two-hander, a piece of dystopian sci-fi in the manner of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror… takes our present-day unease about the intrusiveness of technology and pushes it a step into the future… a high-stakes, will-she-won’t-she battle that keeps us on edge throughout’
— Guardian
‘Resembles an episode of dystopian TV series Black Mirror, but with a poetic heart worthy of Ray Bradbury at his warmest… a show that hums and throbs through its plea for the flesh and blood messiness of life over the delusions provided by virtual pleasures during increasingly sour times’
— Herald
‘An exploration of the role of technology in modern life and its potentially dehumanising effects… interesting and current’
— WhatsOnStage
