In the midst of the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strike, complete with picket signs that read, “AI is not ART” and similar sentiments, one local theater company is tackling the hot-button issue by playing devil’s advocate.
Earlier this year, Orcutt resident and thespian Weston Scott began experimenting with ChatGPT by entering the most absurd story prompts he could think of for his own amusement.
“For the past six months, I have been tricking AI into writing unimaginable plays and pushing the limits of common decency,” said Scott, a member of the theater group Exit Pursued by a Bear since 2015. “You’d be surprised at how easy it is to manipulate AI to go down weird paths.”
After Scott shared his hobby with other members of Exit Pursued by a Bear, “they ran with it in a way that both inspires and terrifies me,” he said.
On Saturday, Sept. 9, the group will host a theater gala event in which audience suggestions are transformed into fully realized AI-generated plays, to be performed by humans immediately.
“I’ll be sitting there at a laptop, the audience will give me a suggestion, and as soon as ChatGPT creates the script I’ll send it to the actors and we’ll perform it,” Scott said. “I think we’ll be able to do at least 10 wholly original plays for the audience at our gala—never performed before and hopefully never performed again.”
The Sept. 9 showcase will be held at Brightside Pizza in Los Osos, starting at 5 p.m. and won’t end “until our robot overlords cut us off—or we’ve eaten enough pizza,” Scott joked.
Admission to the gala is free, but small donations will be accepted to support the theater group’s pursuit of achieving nonprofit status. Over the years, Exit Pursued by a Bear has performed shows at various venues in cities across the Central Coast, including in Solvang, Oceano, Arroyo Grande, and Shell Beach.
“We have performed in backyards, public parks and other community spaces, warehouses, kitchens,” said Tyler Lopez, co-founder of Exit Pursued by a Bear.
Lopez and co-founder Kristie Siebert originally envisioned the group as a way to bring more found-space theater—the concept of converting a non-theatrical area, such as Brightside Pizza, into a temporary theater space—to the Central Coast.
The upcoming AI-generated theater showcase will be held on the pizzeria’s newly finished patio. Some complimentary pizza will be served during the event, while attendees are “encouraged to support Brightside by purchasing drinks or additional food,” Lopez said.
The event will mark the first time Exit Pursued by a Bear has performed at Brightside Pizza, but not the first time its members have ventured to Los Osos for a show. In 2013, the group staged its production of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore at the Red Barn in Los Osos Community Park.
Over the course of the company’s history, admission to the Exit Pursued by a Bear shows has either been completely free or a required donation of $10 or less, at most.
“What I have found really rewarding about working with Exit is how radically accessible it is,” Scott said. “When other theaters have priced their audiences out, Exit is there to do cool shows and challenge the notion of what theater can be.”
Scott was the playwright behind the group’s most recent production, Deaths We Don’t Sing About, an original play performed during two nights in May at Meadow Park in San Luis Obispo.
The company will return to Meadow Park in October for its next offering, Him, a fresh take on Dracula. Scott is back in the writer’s chair for this vampiric retelling, slated to be performed on Oct. 21 and 22 in the park’s indoor recreational facility.
“It’s an immersive Dracula adaptation. The audience will be holed up in a room, trying to keep out a monster,” Scott said. “But maybe the most monstrous part of ourselves is already among us.”
Send holy water and garlic fries to Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 7-17, 2023.