The robots are hiring again. Steam Powered Giraffe, San Diego’s resident troupe of singing Victorian automatons, has commissioned a new unit: Toast, built 1896, rebuilt 2026, circus-style, plays flute, carries a wooden train whistle, and is fitted with a double-reinforced blue matter core for extra safety due to what the official specs describe as “excess self-explosions.” That is a feature, apparently, not a bug.
Toast is performed by Eliana Payne, a professional clown and movement artist out of the San Diego Circus Center’s Pro-Track program, trained in mime under Jerry Hager, and now based in Chicago. The band notes that Payne studied under Hager before he retired, which means they caught the last class of a lineage that goes back further than most of the robots’ own service records. That is the kind of biographical detail that earns a “Good job, high-5!” on its own, before a single note is played.
Toast joins The Spine and Zer0 on stage starting September 30th in Boston (sold out), with Philadelphia already sold out too. San Francisco gets them October 23rd at the Herbst Theatre. The community has been patient since Isabella Bennett stepped down as Rabbit; patient enough, it turns out, that Boston and Philadelphia booked solid before the announcement cooled. Tickets are at bnds.us/plh8k for the dates still available.