Theatre Tech Talks: Artificial Intelligence, Science, and Biomedia in Theatre

Host Tjaša Ferme chats with playwright Chisa Hutchinson about her play, Bleeding Class. Chisa was aiming to write a wacky satire about a global pandemic, but then everything came true. She says she’s not clairvoyant, but has always been just a bit before her time!

Host Tjaša Ferme has an inspired conversation with the creative team of The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy. Creators go deep into demystifying the beautiful cohabitation of theatre and cinema in the piece, the inability to move the camera even a millimeter, and creating an obstacle course as a gift to the audience.

Host Tjaša Ferme chats with David Cote and Hai-Ting Chinn about their opera, Meltdown. This is an adventurous episode about arctic expeditions, drilling ice cores, what monodrama really means, and creating unique experiences mixing operatic tragedy with funny ukulele songs about pee bottles.

Host Tjaša Ferme talks to multimedia artist Sister Sylvester about Drinking Brecht/Good Genes, which cautions how simplistic readings of genetics have always led to fascism. Join a label-defying conversation about the absence of authority in theatre and becoming an amateur geneticist to read the DNA on Brecht’s hat.

Creative director and choreographer Brandon Powers takes host Tjaša Ferme on a deep exploration of the merging of extended reality (XR) with theatre. He explains how theatremakers’ knowledge as spatial creatures is exactly what the virtual reality (VR) world is looking for.

Host Tjaša Ferme has a lighthearted chat with director, choreographer, and filmmaker Mary John Frank about the climate, virtual reality (VR) musicals, why VR works better in “one take,” and how and why to make theatre in VR at all.

Host Tjaša Ferme and media artist Ellen Pearlman discuss Ellen’s projects Language is Leaving Me and Noor: A Brain Opera. They go on a deep, granular dive into the loab: the psychic, unconscious, dark side of artificial intelligence rendering; the future of language depositories; and why all this matters seismically!

In this conversation with Kat Mustatea we chat about her piece, BodyMouth, that is also a new instrument where a dancer’s movements prompt a speech synthesizer. For an extra twist, we ponder if we could use this instrument to reverse and decode the messages behind Tai Chi or the magical gestures of Carlos Castaneda.

Fareeda Pasha wrote The Last Word based on Michael Levin's research on the first robots from living cells. We had a lighthearted conversation about spooky action at a distance in playwriting, equal-opportunity inspiration, and how plays on science can change the world of business, art, and medicine.

In this conversation with director Coral Cohen and sound and video designer Ettie Pin, we discuss the process of making a gamified play, Third Law. Insights from the makers take us through game theory, and how the audience had the unique opportunity to shape the world of the play and the trajectory of the characters.