Tallaght’s Civic Theatre hosts new experimental stage-show ‘PL-AI’ that lets the audience write and control the play through Artificial Intelligence

‘PL-AI’, a ground-breaking experiment in storytelling at the intersection of Theatre and Artificial Intelligence, will take to the stage tomorrow, Thursday March 9^th at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght.

‘PL-AI’ puts the audience in control of a Play’s narrative.

Created by Irish playwright Niall Austin, this innovative immersive experience allows the audience to suggest the plays’ genre and key plot points through a moderator.

These prompts are then fed into ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence system, which instantly generates a script that will appear on screens throughout the theatre.

Talented actors will then use their skills and instincts to bring the audiences’ creation to life, performing the script on stage.

The show, in turn, offers the audience a deeper understanding of the traditional process of play development and story-telling.

This captivating experience has never before been seen in Ireland, and enables theatre lovers to control the development of their own play, in turn, giving the audience an insight into the process of play writing and the future of artificial intelligence in theatre.

At the heart of AI-generated theatre scripts is a technology called natural language processing (NLP), which allows computers to understand and generate human language.

By training deep neural networks on vast amounts of text data, researchers can create AI systems that can produce coherent and meaningful text.

In the case of theatre scripts, AI models are trained on large corpora of existing plays, allowing them to learn the patterns and structures of dramatic writing.

Artificial intelligence can create original and compelling plays that push the boundaries of traditional storytelling, while throwing down the gauntlet on whether we humans can overcome our fear or suspicion of AI to create art together.

Niall Austin, the show’s creator, says:

“PL-AI is an opportunity for the audience to immerse themselves in the creative process of theatre. By putting the audience in control of the play development, we’re allowing them to gain a deeper understanding of how story-arcs are formed and how a play evolves over time. With the help of AI we can create a performance that’s both unique and educational. By allowing the audience to take control of the creative process, we’re hoping to create a truly immersive and unpredictable theatre experience that will also offer a deeper understanding of the traditional process of play development.

The use of AI to write theatre scripts offers exciting possibilities for the future of storytelling and creativity. AI-generated scripts could be used to explore new genres and forms of theatre, such as interactive plays that respond to audience feedback in real-time or immersive performances that blend virtual and physical spaces. AI-generated scripts also have the power to create more diverse and inclusive stories by incorporating perspectives and voices that are traditionally underrepresented in theatre. We’re excited to see how audiences will react to PL-AI and the overall experience of immersive theatre.

Donal Shiels, Artistic Director at the Civic, says:

This is a unique hybrid of research and performance, lifting the veil on the creation and performance of theatre, exposed both the limitations and the potential of a machine’s imagination, while throwing down the gauntlet on whether we humans can overcome our fear or suspicion of AI to create art together.

PL-AI takes place in The Civic Theatre Tallaght on Thursday 9^th March, tickets are available for free on a strictly limited basis here  https://www.civictheatre.ie/whats-on/pl-ai/