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Welcome to V-Gen — Error 404: Not Found, where nothing is static; actors evolve into props, and props evolve humanity.

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Imagine a black and white world where robots move robotically to the backdrop of wall to ceiling newspaper headlines — that’s what V-Gen is all about! It’s a quirky play that uses weapons- grade, sci-fi-powered satire to shine a light on some of Pakistan’s biggest issues.

An original play directed and written by Bazelah Mustafa, V-Gen introduces us to subtle quirks of Pakistani culture, at times scathingly reviewing our society, where incompetence, nepotism, and moral decay are so strong that even advanced AI fails to fix it.

The story follows a top-secret AI development project led by an inept team — hired through connections rather than merit — finalising the workings of the AI named Vision (not the Marvel kind though) for the launch ceremony.

Social commentary

The play’s real punch comes when Vision, the AI, is asked to show off what it has learned about Pakistan after being fed raw data from local Pakistani newspapers. When the team asks Vision to tell them what it knows about Pakistan, Vision starts listing all kinds of negative news, which freaks the team out. They quickly move on, brushing it under the rug as a ‘bug’ — because nothing’s ever that bad in Pakistan, right?

‘Glitches’ like these are actually the heart of the play — showing us the sad reality that no matter how hard you try to cover up corruption, incompetence, and decay of the system, it eventually shines through.

Another powerful scene shows the juxtaposition of celebration and pain by having us follow the story of a man injured in a stampede on Independence Day. The injured man is taken to a government hospital — suffering from load-shedding, overcrowded hallways with women giving birth to one side while the staff parade around with holier-than-thou attitudes as if nothing was wrong.

Comedy of errors

The play is an absolute riot. In one scene, the team asks Vision to answer an important religious question after feeding it religious data. Vision, being a logical machine, gets lost in trying to figure out which sect or interpretation to follow to answer the question, leaving the team frustrated at the lack of a concrete answer. This part of the play points out the many confusions and divisions within religious interpretations in Pakistan’s theocracy.

Then there is a scene, where a woman (played by the director herself) interacts with the robot, asking it to speak to her with love, leading to an unexpectedly hilarious intimate moment that shows us Vision’s more sensitive side — something the team never anticipated.

In another hilarious scene, Vision learns Pakistani curse words (on its own) and cusses the team out unexpectedly for an amateur mistake they make while ordering food to their “top secret” location.

The robot’s creativity takes centre stage as it mimics famous Pakistani singers such as Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, explaining “bottle se bachna kyun zaruri tha [why it’s important to stay away from the bottle”. In the climax, Vision reads a satirical launch speech in the tone of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, poking fun at how political leaders make big, fluffy promises.

A set built on newsprint

The set was definitely the highlight of the play. With newspapers covering almost every surface of the stage, it perfectly showed how we’re constantly inundated with biased information that shapes our worldview. The set design gave off a cold, lifeless vibe, showing how bureaucracy and tech can stifle creativity and critical thinking.

Creative set design choices such as a laptop wrapped in newspapers and a cluttered bookcase filled with the same emphasised how deep our programming goes.

“When I started my rehearsals, I knew I wanted to work around newspapers so we decided to bring a stack. Believe me, newspaper headlines are more dramatic than any script I have ever read in my life. And yes, the smaller and unrecognised the newspaper, the more interesting the headlines!” Mustafa explained.

Overall, the messy and cramped set showed the characters’ incompetence and how their systems were falling apart, giving it a very dystopian atmosphere. However, I felt the addition of a few more interactive elements, like levers and consoles with flashing lights and switches, would have had a very significant impact on the sci-fi theme the play tried to depict.

Ending unplugged: cognitive dissonance

The ending was very open-ended, wrapping up with a powerful scene where the human characters themselves start turning into and acting like robots. The line between human and machine blurs, making us think about how the AI itself is changing the very nature of humanity.

Although not directly saying it, the play calls into thought deep questions about the mechanical nature of human society as well as the deep inherent flaws that exist within it. These observations become glaringly apparent when articulated by an artificial intelligence that is fed the corrupt data that humanity has generated. We are left wondering about the implications of AI interfacing too deeply with the flaws of human society and being transformed by it into the worst aspects of humanity itself.

The stars of the show

The robotic movements of the cast — Ali Sher, Raam Govind, and Tanveer Gill — were quite good. They reminded me of some of the futuristic robots I’ve seen in videos from Boston Dynamics. The director’s cameo was a surprising move; I didn’t expect it at all, but she completely nailed that intimate scene with an AI — only she could pull it off! For the first time, my attention was drawn to someone other than Vision.

What I really appreciated about Mustafa’s direction was her ability to add in subtle nuances that represent the heart and soul of local Pakistani culture. Also, each successive iteration or version of Vision was played by a different actor that brought their own flavour and touch of life to the robot and its behaviour — and together the concept of Vision became greater than the sum of the whole.

During my post-play conversations with Mustafa, she shared an interesting observation: “When I see driverless cars in the developed part of the world and then the poor road conditions in the underdeveloped part of the world, Alexa turning the lights in my smart home that frequently suffers scheduled power outages, it all makes me wonder about the intersection of technology in different societies.”

Review Concluding…. runSimulation(humanity, technology, interface).status = “404: Harmony Not Found”;

All photos provided by The Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi