Electric Rosary

A robot walks into a nunnery. What could go wrong? Tim Foley’s award-winning ‘Electric Rosary’ answers this question with humour and feeling. Set in St Grace’s Convent, rural Britain, it imagines a not-too-distant future in which human-looking robots are employed in farms, hospitals, even churches. Acting Mother Elizabeth’s decision to open St Grace’s to one of these robots, Mary, elicits mixed responses from her sisters, in spite of the government bursary they will be able to collect, a considerable amount of money they need to fund a long-planned journey to their sister convent in Ecuador. As Mary’s presence exacerbates tensions among the sisters preparing for their journey, the struggle for power within the convent echoes unrest across Britain, as Luddite protestors start attacking and destroying robots. Hysterically funny and profoundly moving, ‘Electric Rosary’ blurs the line between women and machines in a poignant exploration of what it means to be human.