Northern Stage: Greta 2.0 Would Like A Word
“Sisters” opens the season.
Greta 2.0 is in the lobby, waiting.
Sisters has just opened at Northern Stage, the first play of the season. By all accounts (I will see it next week), it is a heartwarming and thought-provoking tale of the shared lifetimes of Matilda and her sister, Greta. But Greta happens to be a character created through AI, or artificial intelligence, whom Matilda meets as a child.
The play was the 2022 winner of the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Playwriting, a collaboration between the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College, the Dartmouth Department of Theater, and Northern Stage. This is first full production of the play, following an earlier reading of it at Northern Stage in January, 2023.
While what is on the stage will undoubtedly be compelling, what (or is it who?) is off the stage and in the lobby is sure to garner theatergoers’ attention. Here is how Northern Stage describes what to expect from this specific collaboration between art and science:
. . . We have partnered with Dartmouth's Digital Arts, Leadership & Innovation (DALI) Lab to create an interactive experience in our lobby, which will introduce audiences to the technology central to the play. Students and staff from the DALI Lab [have created] an interactive bot inspired by Greta, the AI sister from [Matthew] Libby's play. The bot will "learn" the play's script and other supporting materials, and will be able to chat with patrons as if they are chatting with a sentient being like Greta.
The bot Greta 2.0 is all the more impressive given that she was created by the Dartmouth students in just two weeks’ time. Managing Director Jason Smoller says, “Our hope is that audience members will come to the theater early to have a glass of wine and interact with this installation.” I popped into the Northern Stage lobby last evening to chat with Greta 2.0 and asked her what she liked about her sister, and what she knew about White River Junction. She voiced her answers. I recommend the experience.
(Photo, top, Jihan Haddad in Sisters. Photo by Kata Sasvari. Sisters runs from October 2 through 20. For tickets and more information, please click here.
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.