BEAN VS. THE ROBOTS: A SOLO SHOW MUSICAL at Hudson Backstage Theatre

The sequel to Midge Lema’s Bean, named “Best of Hollywood Fringe, 2011”, and called one of the “top ten shows not to miss” at the 2012 Fringe World Festival by The West Australian.

Bean can’t remember anything about her life, or even why she went to space. She’s been trapped inside her spaceship for a very long time. Surprised that an audience wandered aboard, Bean takes the opportunity to sing them sad little songs from her weird little space solo show. As she sings, Bean begins to remember a mysterious entity, perhaps someone important, that she lost. Afraid of remembering or, even worse, disrupting her solo show, she deems it easier to trap the audience inside her spaceship forever! Who needs memories anyway?

Also aboard Bean’s ship is a disgruntled hot robot and an optimistic Elijah Wood. Bean loves but despises the hot robot who encourages her to become a robot herself. She adores Elijah Wood who inspires her to be a good hobbit. With help from these companions and the audience, Bean allows herself to remember why she’s been trapped on her spaceship. She learns that while space travel is very hard, it is very worth it.

Midge Lema’s third solo show Bean vs. The Robots is about the way grief seeps into our lives and pilfers our memories. And sometimes we turn to robots to help us fill that void.

Says Lema: “As a kid, I tormented my family and classmates with little pop-up plays and monologues, usually set in a spaceship, always containing a character inspired by Elijah Wood. I would sing creepy little songs that probably still haunt everyone who heard them.” Still at it as an adult, Lema wrote and performed her first solo show Bean in 2011, and (Refried) Bean in 2014.

At the time she worked in a legal department, and spent nights and weekends performing in theatres and comedy clubs. This blissful, sleepless routine was interrupted in 2015 when Lema experienced a significant loss. It was a horrifying, beautiful, and oddly humorous time. Comedy and grief - a classic genre - was the seed for Bean vs. The Robots, although it would take a decade to get the show launched into space.

After this loss, Lema moved into a creative job as an editor and host, writing and conducting on-camera interviews of many luminaries across the entertainment industry. For nearly a decade, Lema launched herself into this work, as some memories began to slip away into space: “...all that mattered was my life at work. I didn’t even write one weird little song. My keyboard lay under my bed, crusted over with dust. I felt the grief would never go away, and I didn’t want it to. But then came a new grief for a weird little kid who sang songs about space.”

This new grief drove Lema to return to developing her own work, including Bean vs. The Robots. She dusted off the keyboard and started writing sad little songs about space travel and Elijah Wood. One seemingly random song became the driving force for the show. She realized why she retreated into that imaginary spaceship as a kid. The weird little songs came at a feverish pace.

Workshopping Bean vs. The Robots in 2025, Lema felt she was back where she belonged: “all I want to do is to continue performing this show, absorbing the energy of the audience, and keep making it weirder… and always a little sad, for anyone who likes those types of things.”