THEATRE REVIEW: Actor//Android
07.03.2023 at Basement Theatre
I’ve been tired recently. I started an independent arts project last year and it’s grown larger than I could have ever imagined. It’s been fantastic, but to tell you the truth, it’s also been excruciating. On the one hand, I will always love the community, the creativity, and the project itself. But on the other hand, it’s an endless paranoia, a fear that this thing will be the last thing I will ever create. I wonder how much I will do to keep this thing alive. Actor//Android forced me to consider the immense pressure I put on myself as a creative, and made me question why I can’t just take a damn break.
Actor//Android is a solo show that follows Seven (performed by Louise Jiang), an AI tasked with seducing and destroying the performance industry. However, even with her endlessly programmed talent (not to mention, her ability to learn French in a split second), Seven still fears replacement and irrelevancy. We watch Seven’s desperate attempts to remain relevant amidst the threat that she will be replaced by the newest model, Eight. Seven’s greatest fear is not failing, it is not embarrassment, and arguably, it is not death either. It is being replaced by the ‘next best thing’ - which is a fear felt by many artists, performers, and creatives.
The beauty of Actor//Android is that it is not the predictable story of a sentient AI trying to become human. It is a story of burnout, industrialization, and how the current arts climate will even break an android. Watching Seven’s movements and choreography decline from calculated and in control to frantic and strained was devastating. I watched her almost beg the audience for a second chance to redeem her acting skills.
“The beauty of Actor//Android is that it is not the predictable story of a sentient AI trying to become human. It is a story of burnout, industrialization, and how the current arts climate will even break an android”
Seven does everything she is asked, following the instructions of her HAL 9000-like superior to achieve her goals at all costs. But she makes mistakes. She goes out in the night to party or ‘network’ even when she is asked not to. And for this, Seven is threatened with replacement. The inability for Seven to experiment or to fail at things - a core component of creative practice - reminded me of the way social media has altered our relationship with art. We think that social media is an easier way to showcase our artistic practice to global audiences, but in reality, it has led to a complex and dangerous reformation of the arts. Suddenly, you are at the mercy of an invisible authority - the algorithm, who decides whether your work is worthy of even displaying to your own followers. I talk to artists who frequently express their inability to experiment, to change, or to alter their creative style in fear it is no longer ‘what the algorithm wants’. And in this way, the artist becomes the android, doing what an algorithm wants.
A unique aspect of this show is the way it uses an android to consider the effects of burnout - the very thing that artists are burning out trying to compete with. But even Seven burns out trying to do everything to escape being replaced. By the end of the show, her efforts have made her…tired. Tired! I thought it was the most unique thing to see an android-character look so drawn and so dejected with the world around them. It really confronted the way I perceive work ethic and burnout as an artist too. The way Seven moves when she is finally shut down, the way her body collapses as she murmurs, ‘why?’ is almost devastating to watch. I could feel the audience hold their breath in this moment. Actor//Android brings such an original exploration of AI to the table.
Jiang’s performance of Seven is tender, humorous, and terrifying all at once - a powerful combination. She pulls off all the comedic beats perfectly, layering a quirky humour on top of Seven’s programmed need to succeed. Jiang’s poise and movement is fantastic - the way she struts across the stage and moves her body to the music, her mime and her lip syncing - there was never a movement that felt out of place.
“Jiang’s performance of Seven is tender, humorous, and terrifying all at once - a powerful combination”
The final moments of the show, with a projector montage of nature, humanity, and space, proved more evocative than I expected. When this scene started, I thought, ‘oh no, not a montage’. But in the context of the performance, it felt like a humbling bookend to what we had just witnessed. I had a moment to reflect and wonder what the hell I was doing, burning out trying to compete with AI and social media. I saw these images of water and space and animals and veins and I thought, we have ruined the beauty of creating things. We have suffocated art with the need to endlessly produce work for an algorithm.
Exploring topical and necessary ideas with unflinching honesty, Actor//Android is the sort of show that burrows into your mind for weeks afterwards. If you’re an artist or creative, I guarantee it will hit you hard. It certainly made me reconsider the way I view myself as an infinitely generative machine. Full of fantastic music, direction, and choreography, this is an important show that will encourage you to reassess the expectations of arts practitioners - both AI and human.
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Book your tickets for Actor//Android here!
Directors: Celeste De-Freitas
Cast: Louise Jiang
Producer: Louise Jiang, Sums Selvarajan
Presented by: Squaresums&co