Technology and the Arts
AI — Perfect Partner or Proceed With Caution?
Artificial Intelligence and its place in contemporary theater
Some days, it seems like AI actually stands for “Animated Infighting.” The mere utterance of the acronym in front of people quickly spurs instant debate and abrupt changes in emotion.
The theatrical community faces its own dilemma tackling artificial intelligence. How best can AI be utilized or represented in the creative development of works by playwrights, directors, designers, or producers? Or is it even something to incorporate at all?
Award-winning playwright and director Annie Dorsen is well familiar with the emergence of AI in the creative process. Dorsen has spent the past fifteen years creating works in “algorithmic theater.” Beginning with her play, “,” Dorsen teamed with computer programmers to work with very rudimentary forms of AI. She then incorporated the algorithms to create theatrical pieces where the audience could explore this friction between human language and machine generated language.
“When you’re talking about machine generated language, it’s a kind of theater already,” Dorsen explained. “In that it’s creating the illusion of a mind behind the language when there isn’t a mind at all. So, my projects play with this tension between the content (i.e., the outputs of the algorithmic process) and the underlying rules of the code determining what that content will be. It creates all kinds of interesting possibilities for presenting that tension on stage and allowing audience members to experience both the illusion and the breakdown of the illusion.”
While Dorsen’s previous plays experimented with old-fashioned, rules-based natural language programming, her latest work, “,” explicitly used generative AI. Her intent, however, was not to showcase the use of ChatGPT. Instead, it was to critique what AI models do, how they work, and what their impacts may be on the future of artistic expression.
“The rules-based, natural language programming techniques that I used throughout the 2010’s are criminally old fashioned,” she said. “We now have this new class of AI models which I will no longer touch. I only used them to make this one piece, which was a critique of generative AI.”
To be clear, Dorsen is not absolutely against the theater community utilizing machine learning or even Generative AI if they have a very good reason to. Her contention is that generally speaking, AI models are presented as a shortcut, a way to get to results without going through the whole process, which can be difficult and time-consuming. A large language model should not become a replacement for artists to develop material organically, either individually or collaboratively with others.
She continued, “Generative AI is not good for the arts, or for the world, for that matter. I worry use of AI will shift people’s focus away from working with each other and reorient art-making toward interaction with tech companies, whose AI models then mediate the whole artistic process. When you access ChatGPT, you’re skipping all the good parts. So, you are kind of inhibiting yourself artistically right from the start.”
The training data AI uses also concerns Dorsen. The data AI companies use to train their models has been taken without permission from other artists and writers.
For this reason, Dorsen hopes new theater students don’t use it. “The purpose of making art, writing and speaking, is to share what you think.” Dorsen said. “That’s what audiences are interested in. We don’t care what an AI model has to say. Like many people have said in the educational context, teachers don’t assign students essay writing because the world needs more student papers. They assign essays because the process of writing a paper is a great way to learn something. The same is true of making theater.”
agrees with Dorsen about AI’s impact on maintaining the integrity and organic collaboration of theater. That said, the two-time Obie Award-winning theater artist still sees the greater need to pursue further understanding of AI and its potential.
Mezzocchi’s opinion stems partially from personal experience. Along with being a director, multimedia designer, playwright, and actor, Mezzocchi has a background in Information Technology, focusing on the development of digital/virtual theater. This combination came to the forefront as he and his collaborators developed theater projects during the pandemic. Over eighteen months of quarantine, Mezzocchi and his team (known as the Virtual Design Collective) supported the production of over 50 new digital works. This led to Mezzocchi being named to a “Top 5 List” in The New York Times of theater artists recognized for their innovative work during the pandemic.
In Mezzocchi’s view, today’s apprehensions with AI echo similar worries that were raised during the pandemic about expanding the reach of digital theater as a viable alternative to in-person performances. “There was legitimate concern where everyone was ready to proclaim theater would not survive during COVID,” he said. “However, a group of my peers and I were like, ‘What if it isn’t over? What if we recognized that these are the new constraints and find creative ways to generate work within those parameters?’ The way we launched into investigating what we could do with digital theater is how I think now about AI.”
That’s why Mezzocchi hesitates in making judgements when looking at the long-term effect of AI. He advocates re-positioning the question. He would rather reframe the questions as, “Why don’t we use the tool, experiment with it, and see what happens?” “What are effective and constructive ways to do it?”
“I would love to have a summit with those who have a stake in the use of AI in theater, including representatives from the technical side and the performance side,” he explained. “From this group I would want them to list out their fears and hopes related to the use of AI and then fund projects exploring each of those fears and hopes. If we really fear that AI will eliminate in-person collaboration, let’s make a piece about that. Let’s have a technologist in that room build out that structure to see what this performance looks like using AI. One side may be right or may be wrong but right now we don’t know because we’re just not doing it. Everything is too hypothetical.”
Mezzocchi cites contemporary use of technology in stage productions as an example. Today, there is rarely any argument about how the growth of LED screens, video projection and other technologies are seamlessly incorporated in today’s theatrical productions. But such talk about introducing such multimedia aspects into a play even forty years ago would have been seen as challenging the integrity of live theater.
“If we just close the doors to AI, and AI starts to find its way more into other forms of everyday living, none of us will be schooled enough when it’s time to incorporate aspects of it into theater, he said. “I want to make sure that that the valve of experimentation is open and dripping a little bit, and at a containable pace so that we can simply ask the questions and learn it.”
Regardless of where each artist stands, both believe that theater’s continued ability to grow must be integrated into whatever contributions AI can offer. It’s the journey to agreeing upon those contributions that remains under construction.
“AI is developing so fast, said Mezzocchi. “It’s become so massive in our culture. It feels like we just turned on the TV and are watching a foreign film without having the language down pat yet. So, we’re kind of terrified and overwhelmed. I’m just looking at the ways that I can break it down into smaller segments and then figure out how best to utilize it.”
Dorsen added, “I hope that the entire AI moment shakes out such that there are specific use cases for specific techniques that have demonstrable value and we encourage those. I would hate to see the theatrical community, particularly student artists, lose all of that opportunity to explore what they can make together in a room just with their imaginations their voices, their bodies, and their minds.”
After my discussions with Dorsen and Mezzocchi, I believe that the role AI eventually assumes in theater will depend on two factors: (1) determining what guardrails are put in the place to ensure the tool is used as an enhancement and not a replacement to the creative process and (2) taking a proactive instead of fear-based approach to clearly understand how it works. Only once when these factors are addressed will a clear path to understanding AI’s value will emerge.
Author’s Note: Special thanks go to Annie Dorsen and Jared Mezzocchi for providing their insight and agreeing to be interviewed for this very illuminating article.
