Moderator / Animé par: T. Erin Gruber
Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel
• Nick Fangzheng Wang and Billy Kairan Guo, “Humanized Machine, Dehumanized Us: Exploring the Creation of an AI-Collaborated Scene”
| This paper explores the use of an AI platform in the bilingual play “They Must Have Smoked,” performed at the Calgary Fringe in August 2023. The satirical play reflects on COVID-19 pandemic injustices, following protagonists through hospitals in history and the future, ending in an AI-imagined Moon Hospital that highlights future societal conflicts. The article examines AI as a creative tool for playwrights, investigating the boundaries of AI-generated content and its incorporation of future predictions. The study finds AI tends to conform to societal values, acting as a passive assistant in interpreting human dissatisfaction. It speculates on the impact of a superintelligent AI seeking absolute righteousness, potentially reducing humans to “rabbits” under strict order. The paper also details AI’s role in translation, promotion, graphic design, and fundraising during production. It proposes a futurist creative framework, suggesting innovative modes for theatre creators to interpret the past. |
• Kara Flanagan, “From Theatre to Online Streaming: The Erosion of Democratic Principles in Isolated Media Environments”
| It could be presumed that broader and cost-effective online stakeholder engagement would endorse democratic principles. But does it? This arts-based research presented as a theatrical play show how online and in-person engagement can function to promote different principles of government control and regulation. While I watch a political drama on Netflix alone in my pajamas and yell at the TV, I get no response. In contrast, my night out at the theatre included conversations in the lobby bar, joint applause, and talk-backs—the influence of patrons’ voices clearly heard in theatre’s aesthetic drama. As I participate in an online stakeholder engagement session, muted, with no video or chat, I muse whether Netflix infiltrated a government regulatory talk when this “social drama” (Schechner, 1988, p. 215) is clearly using Schechner’s hidden staging techniques to drive political actions. Upon waking up in the middle of a political debate in my Netflix show, I wonder what political action will be taken to exert control over their stakeholders? In my fictional play, I argue that online platforms (e.g., Zoom, MS Teams) have the power to promote autocratic forms of government which undermine democratic societies by controlling and restricting the delivery of information to a muted, isolated audience, resulting in oppression of countering arguments and inequity in representation. I argue that theatre as a model for engagement and Hamilton and Chon’s (2023) dramaturgical framework for advocacy offer a structure to uphold Dewey’s (1916/2018) democratic principles in the education system, government, and society. |
Biographies
Nick Fangzheng Wang
Kara Flanagan
| Kara Flanagan is a PhD candidate (Education Studies Program) in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education, University of Victoria with a research focus on curriculum and acting and music education. Kara is a co-founder of an acting conservatory, the Victoria Academy of Dramatic Arts. |
Billy Kairan Guo
| Billy Kairan Guo is a cross-cultural theatre artist who received formal training in Canada, currently based in souther China. Dedicated to exploring the interplay between different cultures and politics, he strikes to convey social reflection and seeks to integrate traditional Chinese aesthetics with contemporary themes, creating thought-provoking performances that resonate with diverse audiences. |