International Affairs current Christina Kettering’s Black Swans on the Omnibus Theatre, a cautionary story about sisterhood as a lot as AI
“Rosie shouldn’t be your enemy, she’s right here to assist”
The encroachment of synthetic intelligence into our each day lives is an easy truth – from Face ID recognition, chatbots, predictive textual content and Spotify suggestions, so many people use AI nearly unthinkingly in all types of the way now. So it’s not exhausting to think about that we’re not far off a time the place greater, extra understanding decisions in regards to the AI we invite into our houses will grow to be the norm. Might society ever be prepared for such a tipping level?
Christina Kettering’s 2019 play Black Swans supposes such a world. A pair of grownup sisters are reckoning with the realities of caring for an aged mom whose well being is in worrying decline and because the burden falls extra on Younger Sister whose house life finally ends up completely disrupted by transferring mum in, Older Sister presents her with a present in Rosie, a humanoid care robotic someplace between Alexa and the T-1000, to ease the load in maintaining her completely satisfied. It’s a call that comes with main penalties.
Translated into English by Pauline Wick, the play is as a lot about relationships as it’s the tech. We discover the usually antagonistic sisterly bond right here and their considerably ambivalent connection to a dad or mum who didn’t usually present a lot maternal heat. Camila França’s older sibling sustaining her carefree life-style now maybe as a response to being compelled to take care of her sister once they have been children, Trine Garrett’s youthful one trying to do all of it in a useless try and seize a great of home bliss.
Ria Samartzi’s route opens out the area of the Omnibus in traverse lengthways in a extremely efficient method. Alongside Amy Daniels’ subtly shifting lighting design, it permits the world of the play to slip between flashbacks to childhood, sideway shifts in dream worlds and the colder actuality of proper now the place the pair appear doomed to be remoted from one another, even in instances of rising disaster. The result’s one thing appropriately chilly, even when it slips in just a few dance strikes.
The AI of all of it can also be deeply fascinating, the moral issues of yielding such private duties as caregiving to expertise sophisticated by the brutally harsh fact of the difficulties of being a caregiver, significantly to a liked one. And the notion of whether or not superior data-driven decision-making can ever be thought-about consciousness is one to maintain you up at evening should you pull the thread so far as it goes right here – you’ll definitely assume twice earlier than ticking that ‘I consent’ button once more (or will you…).
Operating time: 70 minutes Images: Tim Morrozzo Black Swans is reserving at Omnibus Theatre till eleventh Might
