How can theatre counter artificial intelligence?

To find out exactly that, this question will be explored from the 26/27 season onwards as part of a two-year rehearsal process with the »Kaspar 2028« project. The work is based on Peter Handke’s »Kaspar« (1968), described by the author himself as »linguistic torture«: the title character, inspired by Kaspar Hauser, is shaped and controlled by language until he no longer recognises himself – a body that becomes an echo of other people’s voices. This motif resonates with our present day with alarming precision: AI systems, too, shape, standardise and reflect back to us what we have fed into them. Together with Lena Gieseke, a professor on the Creative Technologies Master’s programme at the KONRAD WOLF Film University Babelsberg, and the Swiss director and researcher Manuel Flurin Hendry, a two-year interdisciplinary experiment is taking shape between Potsdam and Munich. Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as part of the »Art & AI« programme, the project explores and critically examines digital cloning and an AI-enhanced rehearsal process for the theatre stage. At the same time, the project regularly opens up the working process between Potsdam and Munich to public presentations and critical discourse.