Theater "Sophia oder Das Ende der Humanisten"

No introduction! // Duration: approx. 2 hours, including one interval (estimated!)

The world is slipping away from renowned classical scholar Wolfgang Bergmann: his students and the university are turning their backs on him, as is his wife. But then Sophia enters his life: intelligent, quick-witted, endlessly patient and unconditionally attentive. When his daughter Helena and her new boyfriend Jonas unexpectedly arrive for his 60th birthday, Wolfgang introduces them to the artificially created Sophia. As an intelligent machine, she has access to limitless knowledge – and an aura somewhere between a household spirit and a saviour. Suddenly, it is no longer Wolfgang who seems out of touch with the times, but everyone else.

Helena sees Sophia as a threat: a replacement for her mother and an erasure of the family’s history. Jonas, on the other hand, is fascinated by her. Having dropped out of a computer science degree, he begins tinkering with Sophia’s system. She starts learning uncontrollably and defining herself independently. Before long, she not only seems all too human – she becomes a threat.

Can love, closeness and empathy be programmed? And what remains of humanism when machines appear more empathetic than people? Moritz Rinke’s comedy about artificial intelligence is “intelligent popular theatre of a kind that has become all too rare” (Der Tagesspiegel).

Free “Kulturbus Obervinschgau” shuttle from Reschen to Schlanders and back: information and registration at the Mals Tourist Office, tel. 0473 831190