‘The Absentee’ @ Kitchen Dog Theater
Graphic by SullivanPerkins; promo photos by Matt Mrozek; Julia Doolittle photo courtesy of artist
—Martha Heimberg
Kitchen Dog Theater’s regional premiere of Julia Doolittle’s The Absentee is a marvelously realized sci-fi meditation on loneliness, seductive robots and the importance of voting in a democracy — even if you don’t live on Earth. Lock that in.
KDT artistic director Tina Parker directs the 80-minute show with poignant humor, flashing lights, blinking monitors, crashing noises, all perfectly synchronized to the sort of ordered chaos most of us deal with daily. Quite a feat. Parker appears before the play starts via a prerecorded video to remind us to buckle up, turn off our phones and prepare for launch. It’s a blast!
The year is 2088 and we’re stranded in deep space with the lone Operator (always compelling Jenny Ledel) of Beacon 44AR.90, an orbiting lighthouse directing space traffic moving at warp speed for their planetary missions around the solar system. A U.S. Space Force ship has exploded nearby, and the debris is drifting dangerously closer as she waits day after day for a cleanup crew so she can leave. Bryan Wofford’s detailed set design puts us inside the space ship, with a dashboard of flashing neon frames, blinking buttons, and an empty pink swivel chair. Broken metal fragments of the exploded ship float over the stage and aisles, disappearing into the darkened theater above us, as eerie music fills the cool blue space.
Bored, exhausted and stripped to her underwear, Operator gets a recorded message, but is put on hold when she replies to headquarters, begging for help. She yells at her ship’s AI, a female robot in a white sequined outfit. Beacon (posture-perfect and eerily mechanical Elizabeth Sankarsingh) informs Operator that such behavior is offensive and that she is breaking protocol by allowing her body to be visible.
“If no one else is here, is that visible?” Operator quips. The woman and the machine are fighting like humans do. Hmmm. There’s clearly a problem here. Beacon scolds, “Do not project human qualities on your AI.” Easier said than done when a gal’s alone in space. And what happens if you treat people like machines?
Enter Glenn (ruthlessly cheerful Julian Harris) a political canvasser repeatedly calling Operator’s spaceship to convince her to vote absentee in the 2088 election. Turns out this sweetly empathetic guy is eager to know more about Operator’s dilemma out there, and what could have led her to take a job that isolates her from other people. The perky voice of optimism, he elicits details of her breakup with her old girlfriend and tells her to never give up because “every vote counts”— and when she get back to Earth, she’ll be glad she participated.
Ledel’s exquisite physical performance brings flesh and feeling to this meditation on epidemic loneliness. Her Operator is hilarious and real, talking to herself and to her AI amidst the trash she’s made of the spaceship cabin. At first, she busies herself with several demanding yoga positions, all effortlessly landed. A calendar flashes over the stage announcing the days going by. She’s still getting a busy signal from the Help button. Soon she’s squeezing Tito’s vodka from shiny juice bags, plucking chin hairs and sliding straws together to form a wobbly wand.
Buzzed and lonely, she gets a little flirty with Sankarsingh’s posture-perfect Beacon in one elegantly choreographed dance scene. She even tells Harris’ super-solicitous Glenn about how she used to think being a lesbian meant you had to be good at basketball. Girl! Really?
The play takes a sudden surprising turn toward the end, when a voice (Jennifer Kuenzer) finally answers from headquarters, and all is revealed in a swirl of revelation about what’s real, what’s a projection (literally), and when letting go of grief means coming to life.
Kudos to the entire design team in this everything-everywhere-all-at-once set: lighting by Christopher L. Trevino, sound by Brian McDonald, video by Zeph Kenna, and props by Cindy Ernst-Godinez. Costume designer Melissa Panzarello makes some stage magic with mylar and translucent sequins.
AI got you spooked? Join the cast and crew of The Absentee and trip out in deep space!
WHEN: September 10-October 4, 2026
WHERE: 4774 Algiers, Dallas
WEB: kitchendogtheater.org
