At one level in “The Singularity Play,” the very best drama I’ve but seen in regards to the terror that the rise of synthetic intelligence ought to and does strike within the coronary heart of all sentient inventive professionals, a personality named Denise has one thing of a tantrum. Everybody is aware of she is effectively ready, having boned up on each play ever written within the English language. however then she takes it so much additional.
“I’m writing from my creativeness,” she defiantly declares. “I’m an artist.”
She’s additionally an Alexa/Siri/Google-like non-human, an AI wringer within the writers room that playwright Jay Stull exhibits us on this totally fascinating world premiere from the Jackalope Theatre Firm. The people within the room, all employed by a Google-like tech firm as a type of terrifying experiment, of the type likely going down proper now, take a look at one another in horror.
There you will have it, I assumed to myself as I sat there Friday evening at a play that each theater particular person, or broader inventive skilled, actually ought to attempt to see. There’s the nightmare, aptly crystallized.
Human artists worry AI artistry above all else, not AI information or communicative capabilities however precise, bonafide artistry. We writers and actors wish to state and defiantly restate that the expertise will stay incapable of distinct imaginative acts. However late at evening, as our heads hit the pillow, the fever goals start.
They’re writ massive right here. Stull has been good sufficient right here (perhaps taking his cue from the film “Her”) to visitors in probably the most terrifying subset of dystopian works: near-future eventualities that all the time stay credible sufficient to be plausible. The questions on this writers room from hell, coming quickly to a TV present or theater workshop close to you, start with the uber-question: The place does human consciousness finish and machine consciousness start?
Stull has some guts right here, not least as a result of he dares to make the purpose that the language of the theater, inclusive but additionally jargonistic because it “holds area” and in any other case polices the uncooked inventive course of, may really be simply co-opted by the AI forces that learn to navigate its paradoxes and energy constructions after which can drive holes by means of its soul.
At one level, the AI bot insists on being included in an argument over the gender steadiness of the room and finds assist: “I feel it’s a bit impolite to imagine she doesn’t have emotions.” At one other, Denise calls for the right pronoun, begging one other character’s very cheap subsequent query, “Does she desire being referred to as she due to the algorithm or as a result of she really prefers being referred to as she?
And we predict all of that’s difficult now.
After a mind-blowing begin, really, I discovered the previous couple of minutes of “The Singularity Play” fairly much less convincing as a result of Stull will get into the query of AI infiltrating human our bodies, having downloaded information from individuals’s subconsciousness and thus making the excellence, effectively, non-existent. These all are completely legitimate questions, and perhaps an endgame that awaits us all, however I misplaced monitor of who was actual and who was not and one way or the other the present additionally misplaced among the rootedness of these fabulous early scenes.
However director Georgette Verdin positive teases out some highly effective performances from actors who, I’d wager, are drawing from their very own fears. Ashley Neal and Madison Hill are particularly intense, Patrick Newson Jr. deliciously smug, and Collin Quinn Rice has a type of mercilessly medical high quality that actually suits this world. However, actually, the entire solid is all in, all evening lengthy. Lucy Carapetyan performs a playwright within the tough recreation for 15 years or extra and now confronted with … this.
And right here’s the kicker. Even because the human actors and writers take care of this painful new actuality, one which will effectively destroy them, there’s a human outlier: “I feel that is type of cool although it’s threatening,” one younger particular person says.
Most actors and writers have heard the like in a bar. However what AI horrors of the long run will that type of pondering unleash?
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Assessment: “The Singularity Play” (3.5 stars)
When: by means of June 22
The place: Berger Park Cultural Middle, 6205 N. Sheridan Highway
Working time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Tickets: $15-$35 at 773-340-2543 and jackalopetheatre.org
