anthropology
Lauren Gunderson
City Lights Theater Company
In the heart of Silicon Valley where currently AI is all the buzz and the source of seemingly countless new start-ups and mounting wealth, how appropriate and timely for City Lights Theater Company to open the West Coast premiere of Lauren Gunderson’s anthropology, her 2023 play about a distraught AI expert who creates from accumulated digital material a virtual AI sister after her real sister has been missing for over a year. In true Gunderson style, anthropology is a tantalizing intermingling of science, technology, romance, and social norms featuring strong female characters. With taut direction by Artistic Director Lisa Mallette and a powerhouse cast of four, CLTC presents a tense, lean-in, heart-pumping anthropology that teeters between sci-fi, mystery, horror, and reality — the last because what occurs is no longer in 2026 all that fictional.
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
Rating: 4.5 E
anthropology continues through June 7, 2026, in a ninety-minute (one intermission) West Coast premiere production by City Lights Theater Company, 529 S. 2nd Street, San Jose. Tickets are available online at www.cltc.org .
Photo Credit: Christian Pizzirani
