The Wonderful ‘Your Name Means Dream’ Finds Heart in AI
Jose Rivera's probing drama "Your Name Means Dream" offers a soulful exploration of our future living with AI.
Last seen onstage at Theater J putting a tender comic stamp on the remarkable Ruth K. Westheimer in Becoming Dr. Ruth, Naomi Jacobson displays impressive range portraying a very different feisty older lady in José Rivera’s thought-provoking Your Name Means Dream.
Rivera — noted for plays Marisol and Cloud Tectonics, and his Academy Award-nominated screenplay for The Motorcycle Diaries — directs the sci-fi drama exploring the relationship between Jacobson’s 74-year-old spitfire Aislin and her AI service robot Stacy, played by Sara Koviak.
Is this a relationship, Aislin wonders aloud. Mostly confined to her New York City apartment, where she rambles around in her grungy robe, her choppy mullet saying, “Don’t try me,” she firmly resents having to relate to Stacy at all. She refers to the robot — designed to look and sound human — as a glorified toaster, a comment that seems to hurt Stacy’s feelings.
Does she have feelings, a soul, a personality? “I will learn my personality,” Stacy insists. Is she there to serve someone else’s ulterior purpose?
The play asks, and prompts, profound questions in juxtaposing ailing Aislin, still vibrantly alive, with younger, beautiful Stacy who can’t ever be considered truly alive no matter how quickly she acclimates to her environment and comes to understand the woman in her charge.
The bot was ordered and sent by Aislin’s son, Roberto, a white-collar moneymaker in some unknown trade north of the city in Rhinebeck. The idea is that Aislin will not only have the help she needs around the house, but Stacy will provide “real” companionship. Aislin won’t feel so alone. That’s the idea.
However, as Aislin points out, it probably makes her feel even more alone that her care apparently doesn’t warrant the time and hands-on attention of an actual human being. Roberto doesn’t visit; he just sent this “plagiarism of humanity,” as Aislin calls her. That’s a powerful line of dialogue, and a significant line to draw between two sentient beings. Is this a relationship?
Certainly for the actors, it is, and Jacobson and Koviak relate swimmingly, unfolding a dynamic rapport as Aislin and Stacy progress through their complicated journey. Jacobson transforms resoundingly — definitely aided by the mullet — into this borderline misanthrope who’s still likable, but, nonetheless has run off five previous human home care workers in the past year.
Koviak originated the role of life-like machine Stacy in the play’s premiere run at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in 2023, and that relative comfort shows in her fluid, and admirably technical, portrayal of the bot’s myriad special skills.
For one, Stacy can be used as a surveillance or remote communications device, entailing that Koviak convey the wacky mechanics of Stacy acting as a camera or videophone or simulacrum of Aislin’s son Roberto.
Of course, she also picks up outside transmissions, resulting in an extended, crowd-pleasing sequence of Stacy, on the fritz, virtually flipping through channels. Perhaps accustomed to pleasing the audience with the scene’s well-controlled frenzy, Koviak skirts the line of overplaying to the audience.
She also finds the heart within this artificial being, who shows genuine care for Aislin, and also reveals what could only be called trauma. Within the intimate confines of Micha Kachman’s exceptionally well-rendered set, the actors forge, yes, a relationship that will leave one wondering how it might feel to be loved by a machine.
Your Name Means Dream (★★★★☆) runs through April 6 at Theater J, 1529 16th St. NW. Tickets are $69.99 to $79.99. Call 202-777-3210, or visit www.theaterj.org.
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