WHEN GRIEF MEETS THE ALGORITHM

The terrible beauty of grief is that it makes us do irrational things with the most rational tools. In Lauren Gunderson‘s anthropology, now in its North American premiere at Rogue Machine Theatre, a Silicon Valley software engineer named Merril uses artificial intelligence to resurrect her missing sister Angie, only to discover that the most sophisticated algorithms cannot decode the human heart. The result is a thriller that pulses with technological anxiety and emotional intelligence, even as it can’t quite decide whether it wants to be a taut mystery or a meditation on loss.

Alexandra Hellquist, Kaylee Kaneshiro

Gunderson began writing this in 2022, a year before ChatGPT made everyone suddenly anxious about AI. Which means she wasn’t chasing a trend. The play feels urgent because it’s about grief, not because it’s about technology.

Under John Perrin Flynn’s direction, the production unfolds on Stephanie Kelley Schwartz‘s set: a laptop, servers, screens everywhere. Alexandra Hellquist‘s Merril enters this sleek tech space like a storm system, all voltage and desperation.

Alexandra Hellquist, Nan McNamara

The premise will remind you of that Black Mirror episode, “Be Right Back.” A year after Angie disappears, Merril scrapes together her sister’s texts, emails, social media posts, location data. She builds an AI reconstruction. From digital residue, a personality emerges. Kaylee Kaneshiro plays both the vanished Angie and her virtual ghost, and the way she shifts between human warmth and uncanny simulation is mesmerizing. It’s all in tiny calibrations of tone and movement.

What makes this different from other AI horror stories is that Merril isn’t playing God. She’s grieving. The digital Angie provokes her, comforts her, unnerves her. It forces Merril to see not just her loss but the parts of herself she’s accidentally coded into the program. Their exchanges get at something real about memory’s fragility and the ache of relationships cut short.

Alexandra Hellquist, Julia Manis

Julia Manis plays Raquel, Merril’s (doormat of an) ex girlfriend, and brings humor to a role that is underwritten. Nan McNamara as Brin, the mother, heartbreakingly captures what it looks like when addiction has torn through a family and left everyone standing in the rubble. They keep the play grounded even when it veers into speculation.

Christopher Moscatiello‘s sound design and Dan Wieingarten‘s lighting turn the stage from sterile office into something haunted. The production has this cinematic pulse, moving between cold analysis and genuine dread.

Julia Manis, Alexandra Hellquist

Then AI Angie starts revealing new information about the real Angie’s disappearance. The suspense works, though Gunderson rushes through some discoveries that deserved more time. At under ninety minutes, she’s juggling mystery, family drama, a romance subplot, and big philosophical questions. It’s ambitious. It’s also overstuffed. The ending ties things up too neatly. I wanted it messier.

But the production itself is stunning. Michelle Hanzelova Bierbauer‘s projection and video design, with Fritz Davis‘s video engineering, makes the digital and human worlds bleed into each other. Screens pulse like they’re breathing. Code scrolls past like incantations. Reality and simulation blur past the point where the distinction matters.

Alexandra Hellquist

For a small theatre, Rogue Machine’s technical production values are impressively high. The show has the look of a major regional theatre production, except it’s almost certainly running on a fraction of a regional’s budget. Under Flynn’s direction, every technical element serves the story instead of showing off, a rare feat.

Hellquist holds it all together. Her Merril can model intelligence but she’s terrible at managing her own emotions, and Hellquist plays that contradiction without softening it. The scenes with Kaneshiro’s AI double are wrenching. There’s this specific pain in recognizing someone you love in a form that will never be real again.

The play isn’t perfect. But it unsettles you. Makes you think. I walked out still turning it over in my mind, which is what theatre should do.

Alexandra Hellquist, Nan McNamara

An admission: I have never liked the prolific Lauren Gunderson’s work before. Her plays are everywhere in American regional theatre, but they’ve always felt too eager to please. Warm and accessible, sure, but safe. No real discomfort, no ambiguity. This one is different. Since she moved from San Francisco to London a few years ago, something shifted. The writing got more introspective. She’s willing now to sit with uncertainty instead of resolving everything into comfort. The move loosened her grip on middlebrow storytelling and opened up space for moral complexity. This is the first play of hers that feels necessary rather than just pleasant. The first one that’s stuck with me past the curtain call.

She treats technology here not as a villain but as a mirror. Her characters are messy and searching, recognizably human even when surrounded by algorithms.

Julia Manis

What lingers isn’t the mystery’s solution. It’s the creeping thought that we’re all building our own ghosts. We feed our lives into machines, trust our memories to code, and then wonder why we feel haunted. The most advanced technology is still the human heart. Imperfect, stubborn, enduring.

Which brings me back to Rogue Machine. They’ve done it again. Their programming keeps taking risks that pay off, and their productions consistently operate at a level that makes most LA theatre look lazy by comparison. I keep waiting for another LA theater company to consistently match what they achieve, but none has yet.

photos by Jeff Lorch

anthropology
Rogue Machine Theatre
Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Avenue
Fri and Sat at 8; Sun at 2; Mon at 8
90 minutes, no intermission
ends on November 9, 2025
for tickets ($15-$45), call 855.585.5185 visit Rogue Machine

for more shows, visit Theatre in LA