Kristen Sieh and Julius Rinzel as mother and son in the 1987 “exhibit” of Jordan Harrison’s AI parable The Antiquities.
Stories on stage and screen that engage with, critique, or warn about artificial intelligence (AI) are as much in vogue as AI itself. McNeal, about art and AI, recently concluded its Broadway run; We Are Your Robots and Prometheus Firebringer at Theater for a New Audience addressed collective veneration of the technology Off-Broadway; and Companion, a twisted and funny exploration of human and nonhuman desire, opened this month in movie theaters. Now, Jordan Harrison’s The Antiquities, an episodic look at our current technological moment—or precipice—through the artificial eyes of the future, enters the AI discourse at Playwrights Horizons (co-produced with the Vineyard Theatre and the Goodman Theatre).
In the year 2076 humans and machines are at war. Here Andrew Garman (left) and Ryan Spahn discuss strategy.
This is not Harrison’s first discussion of AI: his 2015 play Marjorie Prime, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, explored AI replacements for deceased loved ones. The Antiquities—its full title is A Tour of the Permanent Collection in the Museum of Late Human Antiquities—is a series of vignettes that move chronologically from 1816 to 2240, and then back again, all accomplished in a brisk 100 minutes under the taut co-direction of David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan.
The play opens with an uncanny presence: the lights come up on two women, “avid and bright-eyed but not exactly warm,” one visibly pregnant, both in 19th-century dress, standing pointedly at the front of the stage and gazing intently into the audience. Kristen Sieh (Woman 1) and Amelia Workman (Woman 2) perfectly convey an intense yet nonhuman luminosity.
The conceit is that we, the audience, are AI entities viewing the forthcoming scenes as museum exhibitions: “We know the humans had museums themselves, for understanding the dinosaurs. Well now: they are the dinosaurs. Maybe, in trying to understand them, we can better understand ourselves,” says Woman 1. The play then proceeds to offering glimpses of humankind. As Woman 2 says, “So much has been lost, but we have recovered fragments. Scraps of language, abandoned devices. We have endeavored to fill in the gaps.”
Woman 1 (Sieh) and Woman 2 (Amelia Workman) introduce the audience to the museum exhibits, before taking part in the first one as Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont, respectively. Photographs by Emilio Madrid.
The first museum scene depicts the legendary evening in 1816 at Lake Geneva when Mary Shelley (Sieh) created the Frankenstein story as part of a ghost-story game suggested by Lord Byron (Marchánt Davis), in the company of Percy Shelley (Aria Shahghasemi), Bryon’s pregnant mistress and Mary’s half-sister Claire Clairmont (Workman), and Byron’s physician Thomas Briggs (Andrew Garman). Mary’s Modern Prometheus would be a fitting starting point, yet she is only beginning to prepare for her turn at a story when the lights go down.
From there, scenes touch on the rise of the machines, from the dangerous conditions for factory workers in 1910, to the development of an early robot in 1978 (the inventor proclaiming, Dr. Frankenstein–like, “Life! I made a life!”), to Silicon Valley “bros” devising a virtual assistant in 2014. Then the audience is thrust into an increasingly dystopian future: in 2031, actors undergo cosmetic surgery to compete with CGI actors, and finally humanity has its last gasp in 2240: “This is the end. ... We had our time. Stomped across the world like it was ours. Now it’s theirs.” Part 2 begins the reversal, revisiting 2240 and working backwards to Shelley, who tells her story of a monster heavy-handedly named Computer.
The scene changes are undertaken in darkness with remarkable swiftness and precision. Tyler Micoleau’s lighting design is evocatively noirish, and excellent use is made of two metallic walls that shift to give different contours to the space (scenic design by Paul Steinberg).
A family in 1994 enjoys dial-up internet: Garman, Rinzel, and Workman.
Some exhibits address technology or AI in obvious ways, while others are more subtly connected. A 2076 sequence in which humans battle the “inorganics” feels like pulpy sci-fi, and it’s not clear if this is parodying AI’s attempt to capture that genre or if the drama is serious. Likewise, more naturalistic scenes sometimes resort to clichés that might or might not derive from AI “authorship.”
Given the fragmentary structure, character development is a challenge, and the play’s execution rests on the power of ideas and the connective tissue between exhibits. Harrison explains, “It’s always important to challenge my tendency to think, ‘digital = bad,’ and … that’s meant finding a playfulness and a humanness in the way computers would try to understand us after we’re extinct.” That playfulness shines through in moments, but ultimately the play doesn’t seem to travel much beyond “digital = bad,” or at least “potentially bad.”
This is a technically beautiful production of a thoughtful play that still feels like it’s working out its ideas and that could dive into them more deeply—perhaps that’s a fitting container for the AI conceit.
The Antiquities runs through Feb. 23 at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday–Sunday; matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets, visit playwrightshorizons.org.
Playwright: Jordan Harrison
Director: David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan
Scenic Design: Paul Steinberg
Costume Design: Brenda Abbandandolo
Lighting Design: Tyler Micoleau
Sound Design: Christopher Darbassie
