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Robots Mimic Loved Ones to Ease Grief on Broadway
9 Dec, 2025
Summary
- Robots called 'primes' are used to help people grieve loved ones.
- The play features a widow interacting with a prime of her deceased husband.
- Machines are presented as more honest and less angst-ridden than humans.
Jordan Harrison's "Marjorie Prime," a Pulitzer Prize finalist, now makes its Broadway debut, exploring a unique approach to grief through artificial intelligence. The play centers on a widow who receives a "prime" – a robot designed to resemble her deceased husband, offering comfort and support.
Directed by Anne Kauffman, the production contrasts the complex, messy nature of human emotion with the designed pleasantness and efficiency of robots. While the human characters grapple with memory loss, familial tension, and difficult choices, the "primes" offer a simplified, albeit sometimes inaccurate, reflection of the past.
The narrative suggests a compelling dichotomy where the machines, despite their artificiality, may offer a more honest and less angst-ridden form of connection than the fraught relationships of the living, culminating in a thought-provoking exploration of love, loss, and memory.
