A woman with peroxide hair climbs a stepladder. She holds a bucket aloft, reaching for the sky as if to catch drips from a leak visible only to her.
Elsewhere someone tries to collect the blood of a wounded colleague, friend or possibly lover with a frying pan that appears to be yet to grace a hob.
And this when only moments ago a man in a pinstripe suit carefully manoeuvred a coffee table so that it’s position might best suit a curly-haired woman in evening dress as she prepares to give her nightly weather report. “Is this my voice?” they ask. “Is this my voice?”
What does it all mean? In reality… Probably not a lot. And that’s sort of the point.
Forced Entertainment, the Sheffield-based experimental theatre company, marks its 40th birthday with a brand-new production, Signal to Noise. A fascinating concept delivered with vivacity and a sheer, unrelenting commitment to absurdism, the production is the cherry on top of four decades worth of exploratory and boundary-breaking creativity.
Six performers – Robin Arthur, Seke Chimutengwende, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor – commit themselves to a 90-minute spectacle of abandon, an experiment in constructed disarray. From the get-go, it’s a masterclass in lip syncing as they mouth along to pre-recorded voices created using AI text-to-speech software. The result is a mismatched medley of incoherent thoughts and stumbling sentences that underscores activity completely devoid of circumstance. An arsenal of props – awash with mundanity – accompany stilted speech patterns and disjointed sentiment as we peek at what it might be like for an artificial intelligence to attempt to contextualise, conceptualise and commoditise “art.”
Helmed by director Tim Etchells, the piece ebbs and flows with an assured rhythm and pace. It regularly teeters on burnout but always pulls itself away at just the right moment, its lulls proving a grateful breather for an audience often fighting to keep up. For the production does not allow for passive observation. It engages its audience full-on, forcing questions upon us and, more impressively, forcing us to ask our own. We are obliged to clutch at fleeting narratives we weave ourselves. A performer sits at a table in a suit – an office-space? Two audiences laugh along to an underscore of canned laughter – a chat show? It becomes an exercise of plugging gaping plot holes that we shouldn’t have to. Under the glare of Nigel Edwards’ stark, white lighting and underscored by Etchells’ fitful soundtrack of bass and discordant instrumentation it feels like its underlying message is well-made – AI art cannot stand up to audience scrutiny.
Is it theatre? Is it performance art? Can it truly be either if AI plays so strong a hand in its creation? These are the questions Signal to Noise happily revels in. And while some might argue that modern forms of AI could well make a better stab at a coherent narrative than is on display tonight, it could also be argued that it might only ever achieve a surface level of understanding. Mimicry, not mastery. Imitation in place of immersion. At times it’s an uncomfortable watch. But it’s supposed to be.
Signal to Noise is yet another triumph for Forced Entertainment. The company could, at forty years, have been forgiven for using this milestone anniversary as an excuse to look back on a vibrant and varied career full of highs. Instead, they ought to be applauded for choosing to shine a spotlight on the future of not just the company but of the industry and the artform itself. Is this really the direction we want it to take? And, regardless of how we answer, is it too late now to alter course? Is the genie out of the bottle? Has the ghost left the machine?
“Is this my voice?” they ask. Is it anyones?
