Rogue Machine's ANTHROPOLOGY Comes to The Matrix Theatre

The North American Premiere of Lauren Gunderson’s anthropology, directed by John Perrin Flynn, will launch Rogue Machine’s new season on their mainstage. This high-stakes AI thriller is wrapped in emotional urgency while questioning just how far we’ll go to uncover truth and what technology can and can’t help us resolve in our relationships. 

Merril is one of Silicon Valley’s leading software engineers, but her life disintegrates when her younger sister Angie vanishes on her way home from college. A year later, when the police have long abandoned their search, Merril assembles all the digital material Angie has left behind and sets about building herself a digital simulation of her sister. The resultant ‘virtual Angie’ offers her some solace – until, that is, it starts to reveal new details about the real Angie's disappearance. The title of this play is deliberately styled and published as anthropology, in all lower case. 

“anthropology was a risk to write,” believes Lauren Gunderson. “All plays are I suppose, but this one came to me just after ChatGPT launched publicly in 2023 and AI became truly inescapable. I felt the heated surge of an idea written about this new tool that felt both new and old: a thriller, a mystery, a race against time and tech. This play is unlike most of my others, so much so that I almost used a pen name so audiences would experience it without any context to my other work. I wanted this weird, dark, churning, funny, brutalist play to live in its own universe. But technology exposes our humanity (good and bad), so as with any other play of mine, this one is about people not things. It's about a family not AI, it's about sisters not technology.”

Lauren Gunderson (Dramatist) has received the Dramatists Guild Lanford Wilson Award and two Steinberg/ATCA New Play Awards. She was recognized by American Theatre magazine as America's most produced living playwright at Theatre Communications Group (TCG, the magazine's publisher) member theaters in 2017, and again in 2019–20.

John Perrin Flynn (Director / Founding Artistic Director) has helmed the world premiere of David Rambo’s A Good Guy, the Los Angeles premiere of Monsters of the American Cinema by Christian St. Croix, the Southern California premiere of Samuel D. Hunter’s A Great Wilderness, Pocatello, A Permanent Image, and A Bright New Boise, as well as Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom and Penelope, The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy, Tom Morton-Smith’s American premiere of Oppenheimer; the world premieres of John Pollono’s Lost Girls and Henry Murray’s Treefall, and Rogue Machine’s inaugural production, Compleat Female Stage Beauty by Jeffrey Hatcher. John was the Executive Producer and Director of Lifetime’s long-running series Strong Medicine and has produced two other series and 14 television movies or miniseries including the Emmy-nominated Burden of Proof. In 2012, he received the Career Achievement Award for Theatre from the LA Weekly. 

CAST: Alexandra Hellquist as Merril (multiple award-winner for Rogue Machine’s, On the Other Hand, We’re Happy - LADCC Best Production ’22, LA Times - Best of Theater ’22, Stage Raw - Best Supporting Actor. Alexandra played Lillian Gish/Gilda in the world premiere of Unbroken Blossoms - East West Players, Desdemona/Bianca in Othello - Griot Theatre, and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing – A Noise Within); Kaylee Kaneshiro as Angie (four seasons starring as fan-favorite Josie Saltzman on The CW's Legacies. She appeared in Santa Clarita Diet - Netflix, The Real O'Neals - ABC, Chasing Life - Freeform, Criminal Minds - CBS, and American Horror Story - FX. In film, Kaylee starred in Paramount's Spin the Bottle and the independent feature, The Locksmith); Julia Manis as Raquel (appeared in Here Comes the Night at Moving Arts Theatre, Jane Eyre at A Noise Within, and Edward III with Porters of Hellsgate, According to the Chorus at The Road Theatre, Unt. Baby Play with U/S IAMA); Nan McNamara* as Brin (received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle and L.A. Weekly Awards for her portrayal of Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Award-winning Wit, a Stage Raw and Robby Award, and a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle nomination for her portrayal of Katherine Brandt in Moises Kaufman’s 33 Variations - Ovation Award - Best Production). 

Founded in 2008, Rogue Machine has become a pillar of Los Angeles' vibrant theater scene through its commitment to producing new and significant contemporary plays. Rogue Machine has earned more than 30 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards including the unique distinction of being the only theater company to receive the Polly Warfield Award for Best Season by a Small to Midsized Theater three times—in 2011, 2016, and most recently in 2023.  

Additionally, Rogue Machine Theatre received three Ovation Awards for Outstanding Production of the Year and in 2017 they took home the Ovation Award for Best Season, standing out amongst major institutions like The Geffen Playhouse, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and Center Theatre Group. The company has produced more than 30 world premieres and 35 west coast premieres, many of which have gone on to have a wider reach, including Kemp Powers’ One Night in Miami … (Academy Award nominee), John Pollono’s Small Engine Repair, and Neil McGowan’s Lone-Anon (Loners), all of which were adapted into films. It is Rogue Machine’s mission to support local artists and playwrights and to offer new, thought-provoking theatre that deals with contemporary issues across all generations.