Automatic Orchestra: Just Add Music at Orlando Fringe Credit: Photo Credit

At its best, art aspires to be a conversation between creator and audience. Automatic Orchestra: Just Add Music is a conversation without words that seeks to tap into participants’ interior life through interactive musical accompaniment, but it left me confused as to what the heck we were even talking about. 

Described by director Robert Cunha as a thought-stimulating experiment, after an introductory guided meditation the show presents several surreal pantomime scenarios scripted by Irene L. Pynn that are intended to echo the dream state. Olivia Migliorato, Komal Patel, Hillary Shurtleff and Bradley Thornton act out a series of loosely connected scenes involving a skateboarding cowboy, a gun-toting dog and a red-capped cretin cradling a baby seal. While all this is going on, viewers are encouraged to orchestrate a collectively improvised background score using supplied kazoos, drums and tambourines.

As a lover of David Lynch, I appreciate a trippy dream sequence as much as the next dancing dwarf, but I frankly couldn’t fathom this show’s thin thread of a theme. Mike Pynn’s cartoonish props reinforce the feeling that you’re just watching grownups indulge in playground antics, and by the end I was struggling to stay awake, much less engaged. Worst of all, the guest conductor who was supposed to lead the press preview audience largely ignored us, resulting in a rhythmic cacophony that in no way resembled music. 

There might be a meaningful message hidden here about violence and the American family, but Automatic Orchestra is ultimately too muddled for me to say for sure. On the plus side, it’s only actually about 35 minutes long, as opposed to the advertised hour runtime. Highly recommended for hardcore fans of the avant-garde who don’t care if they have zero clue WTF they are watching.

Renie and Rob Productions (Altamonte Springs, FL)
Blue Venue, Lowndes Shakespeare Center
60 minutes; all ages
Tickets: $13

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This article appears in Orlando Fringe 2026.