Firebird Theatre directors collaborate on the show presenting five AI-generated short plays.
On Oct. 3 and 4 at 7:30 p.m., the Firebird Theatre Company, in collaboration with the Gunnison Arts Center, will present staged readings of five AI-written plays along with one human-written play called “Theatre from the Machine.” The production will feature audience talk-backs afterwards.
The intention with this production is to examine the current state of AI as it relates to the arts and to reinforce the importance of human creative expression.
“We are very interested in making our intentions for this experimental production clear with valley audiences ahead of time as they may misunderstand our goals,” Firebird director Tristan Buss said. “Some initial reactions have been negativity, even outrage.”
The performance will feature six directors, each directing a short play reading and collaborating in each other’s readings, including the all-important audience feedback loop at the end to expand perspectives and anticipate future challenges for humans. The evening will feature directors Jimmy Utley, Tristan Buss, William Spicer, Emily Sharan, Bruce Eckel and Macy Vinther. Actor Stephanie Reeves will add her considerable talents.
The reason for probing the state of current AI craft is to experiment and assess, rather than to celebrate it, Buss said. Does AI pose a threat which will compromise or create competition with artists and creatives? The evening’s readings are intended to present different perspectives from six different directors and initiate a dialogue. Some members of the troupe are curious to see where we are in the state of models for the creative process. There is space for both pro- and anti-AI sentiment.
“Is it something to shy away from or can it be a tool to facilitate creativity?” Buss said.
“AI is loaded with public domain works to draw from. I am interested in seeing how far the technology has come, how it plays out on the page and with a live audience,” Buss said.” When performed, how easy or difficult will it be to recognize the differences in the dialogue or to discern aspects of human generation compared with AI? This is why the audience feedback at the end will be crucial to the goal of the evening,” Buss said.
“AI can replicate Shakespearian language,” Buss said, “but can it replicate it effectively and in a meaningful context?”
These are the sorts of questions that he hopes will surface if the audience keeps an open mind and speaks to their experience in the feedback sessions.
If playwrights know what AI is able to do in replicating content, they can be better prepared for the future. Writers can be authentic and competitive if they know the strengths and weaknesses of the model. The evening will be a way to explore whether multi-tiered nuances from human generated material is immediately evident and whether it will be blatantly obvious that the human factor is missing or will AI be increasingly clever in disguising that. Will it have “tells” that will reveal the AI generation, or will it disguise the human prompt from which it originates?
Buss himself works with AI models and programs in his day-to-day life as the Electronic Resources Coordinator at the Western (WCU) library. He said that the prevailing notion amongst creatives is to pretend that AI generated works “simply don’t exist.” Hence the interest in presenting the challenges and some current works for examination and contrast. His personal belief?
“You can’t replicate human creative expression,” he said.
(Enid Holden is a Gunnison-based freelance writer.)
