Staging Intelligence

Exploring the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Theatre
September 9, 2023, 9:00am – 4:00pm
Theatre SilCo
Silverthorne, CO

ABOUT

Join the Colorado New Play Festival September 9, 2023 at Theatre SilCo for an exploration of the intersection of artificial intelligence and theatre where innovative minds and creative spirits collide. Explore the limitless possibilities of AI’s transformative impact on the world of performing arts, as we delve into the fusion of cutting-edge technologies and the timeless art of storytelling. Engage in debate over the positive and negative impacts of AI on theatre and the arts. Immerse yourself in captivating discussion and interactive demonstrations showcasing how AI is revolutionizing stage productions from virtual actors and autonomous set design to AI-generated scripts and audience engagement. Explore the future of theatre, where human ingenuity and artificial intelligence converge to create extraordinary performances that challenge the boundaries of imagination and redefine the very essence of live entertainment.

TICKETS

$100 for in-person. Includes coffee & pastries and lunch
$50 for virtual attendance

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

9:00 am – 9:45 am: Welcome reception

9:45 am – 10:00 am: Introductions and info about the conference

10:00 am – 11:00 am: Reading of playwright Spenser Davis’ two 10-minute plays + interview with Davis about the process and open questions.

11:00 am – 12:00pm: Impact of AI technology and current uses in theatre. How Chat GPT-4 works as well as other AI Software with real life demonstrations. (Heidi Boisvert)

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm: lunch

1:00 pm – 4:00 pm: Hosted panel conversation with tech experts, and theatre industry professionals. (Chris Alleman, Morgan English, Kai Larsen)

4:00 pm: Conference ends.

PARTICIPANTS

Spenser Davis – Playwright
As a playwright, Spenser’s newest, A Million Tiny Pieces, was written for South Coast Rep as part of the Elizabeth George Commission and was recently developed at both the Pacific Playwrights Festival and the Colorado New Play Festivals; it is currently under option with SCR. His other plays include Plainclothes, Merge, Underdogz, the virtual play The Spin, and the critically acclaimed audio drama Primer. Spenser’s short plays have produced across the world, and have been published by Smith & Kraus. As a screenwriter, his first pilot Knox County Nights was a Finalist at the Austin Film Festival, and he’s currently developing projects with A+E Studios and Busy B Entertainment, among others. His honors include the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award from the American Theatre Critics Association, the B. Iden Payne Best Directing Award, the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Director, and being named a finalist for the Harold & Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award.

Chris Alleman – Producing Artistic Director, Theatre SilCo
Chris has served as the Producing Artistic Director for the Lake Dillon Theatre Company since 2002. Since that time the organization has grown from a $140,000 annual budget to just over $1,900,000. He has received numerous directing awards for his productions from the Denver Post Ovation Awards, Colorado Theatre Guild, CultureWest, and has been honored with “Outstanding Nonprofit Professional Philanthropy Award.” He is a former board member of the Colorado Theatre Guild, is a member of America for the Arts and currently serves on the musical selection committee for the 2019 Fall National Alliance for Musical Theatre Fall Conference and Festival. He is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographer’s Society. Chris holds an M.A. from Texas A&M, Commerce and was a Graduate Fellow at Texas Tech University.

Heidi Boisvert – The Intersection of artificial intelligence and theatre
Heidi Boisvert is an interdisciplinary artist, experience designer, creative technologist, and researcher who interrogates the neurobiological and socio-cultural effects of media and technology. She architects expanded reality and transmedia storytelling experiences and devises networked dance and theatre to examine the role of the body, the senses, and emotion in human perception and social change. Boisvert founded futurePerfect lab, a creative agency and think-tank that harnesses pop culture, emerging technology and neuroscience to ignite culture change. She designed the first 3D social change game, ICED, to shift the frame around immigration and America 2049, an alternative reality game about pluralism. She also co-founded XTH, a startup developing open-source biocreative instruments. Boisvert has been a TED speaker, Rockefeller Creativity + Technology = Enterprise Fellow, and a cultural ambassador in Turkey. Presently, she is working with David Byrne on Theater of the Mind, an immersive theater piece and co-curating EdgeCut, a live performance series exploring human-digital relationships. Boisvert is Assistant Professor of AI and the Arts at the University of Florida, a Senior Research Fellow at the Norman Lear Center, a research affiliate in the Open Documentary Lab at MIT, and a member of NEW INC’s Creative Science track.

Morgan English, Lawyer – Copyright Law
Morgan English is an artist, attorney, and new media researcher. She uses her expertise to study and train others on the intersection of law and emerging technologies. Morgan advocates for artists at work and in her personal life as a pro bono attorney. She has been lucky enough to merge her passions of education, art, law, and technology with her career. Her goal is to continue to help those in the technology industry solve legal issues with tech-based solutions.

Kai Larsen – Artificial Intelligence Technology Systems
Kai R. Larsen is an Associate Professor of Information Systems in the division of Organizational Leadership and Information Analytics, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. He is a courtesy faculty member in the Department of Information Science of the College of Media, Communication and Information, a Research Advisor to Gallup, Associate Editor of MIS Quarterly, and a Fellow of the Institute of Behavioral Science. Kai is most known for providing a practical solution to Edward Thorndike’s (1904) Jingle Fallacy and for his contributions to the Semantic Theory of Survey Response (STSR), which holds that results of surveys using attitude scales primarily measure the linguistic relationships between survey questions. Kai’s book on Automated Machine Learning was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. He was named as one of the 75 leading Academic Data Leaders of 2022 by CDO Magazine along with some of the world’s best computer scientists.

Kai has published papers in top journals of three disciplines, and his paper with Lee and Kozar is one of the top 5 most downloaded in the Association for Information Systems’ electronic library. Kai and his students have developed several award-winning technologies currently in use by thousands of users, including INN and TheoryOn, and he manages the Theories Used in IS Wiki. As Director of the federally supported Human Behavior Project, he is conducting research to create a transdisciplinary “backbone” for theoretical research. Kai’s research uses natural language processing technologies to create an integrating framework for predictors of human behavior. The research has implications for our understanding of many human behaviors, including technology utilization, investor decisions, voter behaviors, and cancer prevention behaviors. Kai is widely acknowledged as the best Sulfur-crested cockatoo trainer on his street of the Keewaydin Meadows Park neighborhood of Boulder, Co.