BEHIND THE SCENES: Students from Princeton High School, from left, juniors Branden Zhou and Allan Chen, and senior Nicolas Grahamdetto, transform original prop robot Artie in time for the Langhorne Players’ production of “After the Blast” by Zoe Kazan. The play opens April 25 and runs until May 11. Information is at LanghornePlayers.org.

By Wendy Greenberg

Students from the Robotics Club at Princeton High School are getting rave reviews for their role behind the scenes for a regional theater company: rehabilitating a robot prop that is integral to the plot of an upcoming play.

The Langhorne Players, based in Newtown, Pa., opens its 78th season on Friday, April 25 with Zoe Kazan’s play After the Blast, about people living underground after a nuclear disaster. The robot enters the story to train the female lead character for a new profession, however, she makes a strong connection to the fuzzy companion, which brings out her inclination to nurture in a society where fertility is regulated.

Director Ryan Lafferty dove into the play, and was intrigued by the character Arthur the robot, fondly named “Artie” after Star Wars’ R2D2, which he resembles. Lafferty thought about having a robot designed and built. Seeking advice, he looked at credits for the original production and found the designer of the original robot, Noah Mease, who told him that the robot was languishing in the prop shop storage room at Lincoln Center in New York, where the play premiered in 2017 with the lead couple played by Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper. The Langhorne Players’ couple is portrayed by Caity Brown and Jamil Long.

After confirming that the robot was available, and securing permission to use it from the play licensing organization and the Lincoln Center properties department, Lafferty and the play’s producer drove up and navigated the back hallways of Lincoln Center toward the props area. They came away with several remote controls, and they buckled Artie in their back seat.

But they were also told that the robot did not work.

Langhorne Players board member Jack Bathke, an English teacher at Princeton High School, thought that the students from the high school Robotics Club could be helpful.

“When we were slated to do Zoe Kazan’s After the Blast this season, I knew the challenge was going to be the robot,” said Bathke. “I spoke with our properties master about her ideas for the robot, but then I realized that this challenge presented a possibility for what I have been wanting to do with our theater company.  I’ve wanted to create an educational outreach facet to our marketing department, and what better way to start than with reaching out to high school students?” When he learned that the robot was not working, “it was at this moment that I thought, ‘What a great opportunity to get the kids involved,’” said Bathke. “So, the director and producer of After the Blast dropped Arthur — Artie for short — at Princeton High School, and the kids went to work.”

Robotics Club supervisor Oren Levi, a physics teacher at Princeton High School, said, “A lot of our students are proficient in computer programming. Originally they were going to build one from the ground up, but we didn’t know if they would complete it in time.”

The students even wrote a user manual for the cast to use. Lafferty called them “miracle workers. They brought it back to life.”

Lafferty said that the play was selected because it was a subject people would think about. Langhorne Players had wanted to perform it in 2019 but got waylaid by the pandemic, and when they started performing again the thought was not to do a “heavy” play.

“The writing is exceptional,” he said. “Pure poetry for every character.” The play depicts a society where,

coping with an artificial habitat, the underground population relies on implanted chips that simulate everything from adventure in nature to flavors of their daily meals.

“In a world decimated by nuclear fallout, we witness a most human story of hope and survival buried deep underground,” Lafferty wrote in a synopsis of the play, calling it “a heartfelt, yet telling mirror held to the face of today’s society. Each of us live in private little silos of our own making; isolated by choices and circumstances beyond our control.”

As for Artie, his presence adds “such exciting energy to the production and makes it feel like a sentimental homecoming,” he said.

The theater group gave the Princeton students some guidance: the robot had to move its head — moving the arms were a bonus. The vocals will be done done by an actor in a soundproof booth, but the front of the robot has a ring of lights that make it appear it is talking, and that had to be cued.

The students made it all work. Said Levi. “They were problem-solving until the very end.”

After the Blast will be performed April 25 through May 11 at The Spring Garden Mill Theater in Tyler State Park, located at 1440 Newtown-Richboro Road (Route 332), Newtown, Pa. A special talk back night is Sunday, May 4. Tickets, at $25 each (with discounted student admission), are available at langhorneplayers.org