‘Prospero’s Black Box’ blends Shakespeare and AI ethics at Denver Fringe

What do Shakespeare and AI have in common? Well, I asked ChatGPT and here’s what it said.

It said they both have great creativity, are incredibly adaptable and have a mastery of language. And while I’ve got a few quibbles with that response, here’s an additional connection that ChatGPT or AI would never be able to draw: it’s also the subject of Prospero’s Black Box at the 6th Denver Fringe Festival, performing at the Bug Theatre on Navajo Street.

Prospero’s Black Box is a solo clown show about staying human in an age of AI, created by Jeff Mills. The play’s narrative is riffing on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and how it connects with the godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton.

The show opens with Jeff Mills, the creator and solo actor in the piece, wandering the theater while playing the Strumstick and interacting with the crowd. After a brief announcement about what the Fringe itself is, the show kicks off with Jeff singing a rowdy song while wearing a VR headset, playing the Strumstick and standing on a red stool.

After that, it goes into this video on the projector screen that is behind Jeff, which features an AI recreation of Geoffrey Hinton, kind of making his case for creating AI, by saying that he was just doing what anybody else would have done in this situation. But now that he’s seen it being exploited by companies, he doesn’t think it’s possible for it not to be exploited by bad actors and doesn’t want it to be used in war or in the creative process — and definitely doesn’t want to see it replace human artists, which is the central premise of this show.

Following that sequence, the play transitions into a riff on The Tempest that is heavily infused with AI. In this version of the story, Prospero’s magic book is his AI. Jeff, as Prospero, invites audience members to represent Miranda and his brother, Antonio, as he loosely explains the plot of The Tempest. However, this is quickly derailed when Prospero uses his Ariel AI system.

In Shakespeare’s version of The Tempest, Ariel is a magic island fairy. In Prospero’s Black Box, Ariel is an AI who assists Prospero in creating a tempest to be used against his enemies, which brings him back to the idea that Hinton’s AI mentioned at the beginning of the show: this technology will always be exploited by bad actors like him.

The rest of the show is then this absurd defense of humanity in this digital age that we find ourselves in. Jeff is constantly doing the most absurd, human things that AI couldn’t possibly create itself. This ranges from hoisting himself up backwards on a stool to putting sticks of bamboo between two audience members on stage to staging the wedding from The Tempest with audience members that ends in a massive dance number with the entire crowd clapping along.

Near the end of the piece, Jeff asks the entire audience to join him in saying, “I forgive you,” because he believes forgiveness is one of the most human things. Fittingly, this is also one of the central themes of the actual play, The Tempest itself.

The piece wraps up with him reading this long letter from Prospero’s friend, Grammy-nominated musician Nick Cave, for some reason, in which Nick Cave rails against ChatGPT being used in the creative process and tells a story about a songwriter using lyrics from ChatGPT because it’s easier, condemning him as being a part of the death of culture. This inspires Prospero to drown his book by ditching his virtual reality headset and embracing his creativity.

James Donlon, the show’s director, keeps the show moving at a steady pace while creating an alluring, cerebral playground for this existential theatrical experience. The projections, designed by Dwight Bellissimo, are highly engaging and well-integrated into the show, representing everything from Prospero’s AI companions to the spirited party atmosphere at the end.

Prospero’s Black Box itself is very heady and highly philosophical, and like the actual Shakespeare plays that this show is riffing on, it can be a little bit hard at times. But like I tell people when they go to see actual Shakespeare, don’t focus on trying to understand every single word.

If the concept of transhumanism is super confusing to you or you don’t know who the German philosopher Martin Heidegger is, that’s okay. Focus on the feelings, and Jeff Mills has given you plenty to feel, connect with and think about in his deeply moving ode to humanity.