Theatre and AI

Theatre Antoine, Paris

This morning, I found myself again reading the preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), the novel by Théophile Gautier. I’ve never actually read the novel—just the preface, which is enough of a manifesto to earn its own ISBN. A bold defense of art for art’s sake, it’s been recommended for generations, and I often return to it. Now more than ever, this nearly two-hundred-year-old tantrum against utility feels eerily aligned with our new era of AI and algorithms.

 

For Gautier, the villain was the newspaper. He claimed it killed the book, just as artillery killed courage. Newspapers, he said, strip away surprise, dull the senses, and replace personal thought with soggy, reheated opinions. Every pleasure they touch loses its freshness. We no longer stumble upon a book and call it our own, no longer enter a theatre and gasp with delight—because everything has already been reviewed, ranked, spoiled, and posted. Worse still, we grow used to this: like people who can’t taste wine unless it’s been infused with lemon zest.

 

How quaint that all sounds compared to the digital tsunami of the internet and A.I. Justin E.H. Smith put it bluntly in Irrationality: “The internet is destroying everything… televisions, newspapers, musical instruments, clocks, books… universities, banks, movie theaters, democracy.” (p. 208, in case you’re still using page numbers).

 

The internet and AI have done more than flood the world with information—they’ve clogged it. They’ve stolen our ability to spot a fraud, inflated our confidence, and turned human connection into a buffering wheel. Art is now at our fingertips, but our fingers have gone numb. Our children have seen death, blood, and sex in every imaginable position. Nothing shocks. The Marquis de Sade is now about as scandalous as a Tuesday soap opera. Our emotionally stunted presidents speak in tantrums. Artists craft movies and plays not to challenge audiences but to please algorithms. No one listens to the poet in the garden anymore—everyone is scrolling. For the first time, humans cannot see their future—for that future is a world without humans. So we write books with gloomy titles: The Death of the Creative Class, The End of Conversation, Philosophy’s Funeral, Universities: A Postmortem. And, yes, soon—The Death of Theatre.

 

Theatre. What a peculiar, tender little art form. What a charming antique it once was. Fifty years from now, a father and son pass the overgrown rubble of an abandoned theatre.

 

“Wait,” says the boy, “you’re telling me people used to leave their homes and sit in a building together to watch plays? On purpose?”

 

“Yes, son.”

 

“That sounds… primitive.”

 

“They were. And once upon a time, people wrote those plays. Whole scripts. With characters and everything.”

 

“Why would anyone waste time doing what A.I. can crank out in seconds?”

 

“Because they were part of something called the creative class. Which is a polite term for ‘the underpaid.’ They worked long hours. For meaning.”

 

“Poor things. What were they called again?”

 

“Playwrights. Screenwriters.”

 

“And they really thought they’d be remembered?”

 

“They did. But they were too busy trying to be relevant to see the future coming.”

 

“I’m glad we put playwrights and screenwriters out of their misery.”

 

“Me too. Isn’t it nice to live in an age where no one has to assemble cars, wash dishes, write novels, or—God forbid—pen a play? Now we can focus on the truly important things.”