How Human.V.oid Came To Be

Actor and co-writer Piyush Sharma tells the journey of the film from inception to the screen.

The year was 2019. The world was different. WOW-EFFECT Theater (WE) had just produced and performed “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Noah Smith, our sixth production. It was the third year in a row WE picked up a well-known play to present to the Nijmegen audience. We were now itching to put forward some original work which also gives our members an opportunity to bring the writers within to our forefront.

During the summer break of 2019, writing enthusiasts from WE came together to brainstorm on ideas within the framework of “2040” as the broad topic. From multiple ideas we presented to each other, we agreed to pen-down three stories, split-up into teams and co-author these stories set in the year 2040.

“Theater to me is an opportunity to consume the spotlight, narrate a story, step into someone’s shoes and absorb the emotions, the personality, the thought process – making the character your own. I always liked writing and creating something of my own and sharing it to the world. This was a perfect time for me to co-write my first play together with Alexandra Granberg aka Alexa 😉. We wanted to write about the technology advancements by the year 2040 and how they might affect us as humans.”

The process of writing a story together is challenging as you constantly have to align with each other’s cerebration and be on the same page to take the story forward. We imagined progression in Artificial Intelligence, consequently, giving birth to a self-learning machine with a window to perhaps grow its own consciousness – Infinity. What is the greatest or the most noble profession in world? If you pose this question, I am sure saving lives counts in the top five so we created the Doctor – Dr. Ambrosia. As I was working on medical devices and was allured by the T.V. series Lucifer, I created Adam and Eve – the two lawyers. As the Newton’s third law suggests, every action has an equal and opposite reaction – we gave space to the numerous conspiracy theorists and the conventional thinkers alike. This was our foundation to the story.

“What’s in a name?”, Shakespeare wrote. Well, we took a while to name it Human.V.oid which could be understood in multiple ways: Human Void – the lack of humanity which we sense in many cases in the world we live in or Human v/s Humanoid – the challenges we will face in giving up more and more control to A.I. In a future where Humanoids exist, humans become the creator of a new life form. What does it take to be human, or Creator, especially when you have to co-exist with your Creation, the humanoids?

Without revealing much, I invite you to watch WOW-EFFECT Theater’s first short-film produced during the challenging times of Covid where, we, as humans lost our most beloved possession of contact and to socialize.