As early as the first of this month, August, when some 500 actors picketed the outside WB Games in Burbank, California, regarding the consent and use of AI replicas. This protest coincides with SAG-AFTRA’s declared strike in July after eighteen months of negotiations fell through.
SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents voice and motion caption performers, had, in 2023, a three-month strike that received international attention, although that strike was pertaining largely to streaming sites, their lack of residual agreements and regulation of self-tape auditions.
As technology has rapidly progressed in the 21st century, particularly pertaining the surge in Artificial Intelligence, raises questions around ownership, consent and artistry. All questions that theatre company, SUBJECT OBJECT, tackles in this technological marvel of a play.
Instructions is a play of instructions displayed on two monitors not visible to the audience, but visible to The Actor, played by a new performer every day. The Actor has no pre-rehearsal and has no idea what the forthcoming instructions will be. As The Actor states, “so we are in the same boat: I don’t know what is coming and neither do you.” Today, The Actor was played by Camilla, who is also performing in the current sold-out puppet show, Bark Bark, also on at Summerhall over the duration of the fringe.
Camilla waves to the audience, and reads out the initial instructions, detailing the rules of the play, and describing the surrounding set, including a camera, that films The Actor for the duration of the play and a projector onto which the camera’s view is projected. Camilla looks nervous in the beginning, but very quickly settles into the quick set up, and delivers a vulnerable and honest performance.
This is not the first play at the Edinburgh Fringe to use different actors each performance with no rehearsal. Last year, the Lyceum saw the return of The Oak Tree by Tim Crouch, in which a performer is invited to perform in the same manner of Instructions, except Crouch plays The Hypnotist and expertly guides his fellow actor through the play, feeding him lines through a headset or on a piece of paper. In the same year, the moving autobiographical play Nassim by Nassim Soleimanpour at the Traverse, also invited a new performer each day who received an envelope with a script to read for the first time. Both plays were exceptional stand outs from last year’s festival and Instructions is surely one of the standouts of this fringe. The creativity behind the project cannot be understated. An actor, playing an actor who no doubt has experienced the many highs and lows promised to those of us working in the professional entertainment industry themselves, whilst at the same time not being previously aware of the ametaphysicality of the piece is entirely original.
The streamlined technological layering of the play is expertly done, and ultimately, you’re left leaving the theatre what is creation, what is real and what is human?
Instructions is on at 13;10 in The Old Lab, Summerhall, from Aug 1 – 26
Image provided via Summerhall press release