David values a full-time job and a gym membership, and is having an affair with Clare. Maree prefers to do her shopping online and has a drinking problem. Jimmy has just returned from “the other side.” And Sam is a teen goth who likes welding. The story starts in a living room and ends in the deepest reaches of the black hole that is the internet. This poetically absurd modern drama takes our most familiar truths and our most popular aspirations to a level of strangeness beyond comprehension – but is it a point of no return? Playwright Roslyn Helper partnered with a predictive text AI program to create a theatrical “algorithm” that asks us to consider the increasing role that AI plays, and will play, in our cultural lives.

Written by Roslyn Helper in collaboration with SwiftKey Note
Directed by Jana Arnold

Each performance will be followed by a discussion on the future of AI and cultural expression with Dr. Harold and the cast. In addition, Dr. Harold will hold a free public lecture on Things Worth Keeping: The Value of Attachment In A Disposable World at The Liberty Theatre on Saturday, October 19, 7pm.

About Dr. Harold: Christine Harold is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication.  She teaches courses in rhetorical criticism, rhetorical theory, and popular cultural studies. Her scholarship analyzes the politics of consumerism and explores opportunities for meaningful political action in a world increasingly defined by the logic of the marketplace. Her forthcoming book, Things Worth Keeping: The Value of Attachment in a Disposable World (2020, University of Minnesota Press), looks at the relationship between mass production, product attachment, and consumer waste. Her first book, OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture (2007, 2009 University of Minnesota Press) evaluates strategies of resistance to the commercialization of public life. Among other venues, her work has appeared in Public Culture, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and JAC. Dr. Harold serves on the editorial boards of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Western Journal of Communication, and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.

Part of The Center’s BIG IDEA project Marketplaces: From Open Air to Online, August 30–November 8, 2019.