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An AI Explores the Plays of The Bedford Introduction to Drama

To investigate what an AI dataset might think of a historical body of theatrical work, I took the list of plays that were included in the 8th edition of The Bedford Introduction to Drama (ed. Lee A. Jacobus) as a representative sample of a "canon", though I acknowledge this list is heavily weighted towards white male playwrights in western theatre. I also included the most recent Tony Award winners for Best Play/Best Musical (2022) to examine the AI's familiarity with the most contemporary works in its dataset. These were all created by Midjourney (v4) on a pro account between December 2022-February 2023. Except where otherwise noted, prompts took the form of:
Theatrical production of [TITLE]::2 [PLAYWRIGHT], theatre, proscenium performance
While clearly not every production needs to be in a proscenium theatre, I arrived at this prompt after a series of tests to find consistent phrasing that would be generally successful. These are not presented as actual "designs" for these shows. What I find fascinating is seeing where the AI is closer to the 'world' of the play or whether it has completely misunderstood or misinterpreted the prompt. Even with the titles for which the AI appears both accurate and compelling at first glance, upon closer inspection one might note that these 'designs' do not hold up to much scrutiny as truly serving the needs of the play. Nonetheless, I hope this is an intriguing exploration of how an AI has assimilated and amalgamated theatrical production within its dataset.

Titles and playwrights are listed below their matching image.
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Agamemnon, Aeschylus
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Oedipus Rex, ​Sophocles
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Antigone​, Sophocles
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The Bacchae​, Euripedes
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Lysistrata, Aristophanes
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The Twin Menaechmi, Plautus
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The Brothers, Terence
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Dulcitius, Hrosvitha
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The Second Shepherd's Play, unknown
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Everyman, unknown
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Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
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A Midsummer Night's Dream​, William Shakespeare
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Hamlet​, William Shakespeare
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The Tempest​, William Shakespeare
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Life is a Dream, Pedro Calderon de la Barca
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Tartuffe, Molière
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The Rover​, Aphra Behn
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The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, Chikamatsu Monzaemon
NOTE: Midjourney does not allow the term 'suicide', so I used its Japanese title, Sonezaki Shinjū
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The Way of the World​, William Congreve
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A Doll House, Henrik Ibsen
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Miss Julie​, August Strindberg
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Fashion, ​Anna Cora Mowatt
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Uncle Tom's Cabin​, George Aiken
NOTE: Midjourney does not allow the phrase "Uncle Tom" so I removed "Tom" and added the extended title to prompt instead for "uncle cabin life among the lonely".
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Shenandoah, ​Bronson Howard
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The Importance of Being Earnest​, Oscar Wilde
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The Cherry Orchard​, Anton Chekhov
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Mrs. Warrens' Profession, George Bernard Shaw
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Riders to the Sea, John Millington Synge
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Trifles, ​Susan Glaspell
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Six Characters in Search of an Author​, Luigi Pirandello
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The House of Bernarda Alba, Federico García Lorca
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Desire Under the Elms, Eugene O'Neill
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Mother Courage and Her Children, ​Bertolt Brecht
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The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams
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Death of a Salesman​, Arthur Miller
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Endgame​, Samuel Beckett
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A Raisin in the Sun​, Lorraine Hansberry
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The Strong Breed, Wole Soyinka
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Zoot Suit​, Luis Valdez
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The Homecoming, Harold Pinter
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Buried Child, Sam Shepard
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Cloud Nine​, Caryl Churchill
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"MASTER HAROLD"... and the Boys, Athol Fugard
NOTE: I omitted the iconic punctuation, as Midjourney interprets those characters as distancing the concepts of 'Master Harold' and 'and the Boys'.
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Glengarry Glen Ross, ​David Mamet
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Fences, ​August Wilson
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Angels in America​, Tony Kushner
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Arcadia​, Tom Stoppard
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How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel
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The Laramie Project, Moisés Kaufman
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Topdog/Underdog, Suzan-Lori Parks
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Eurydice​, Sarah Ruhl
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Doubt, John Patrick Shanley
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The Seafarer​, Conor McPherson
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God of Carnage​, Yasmin Reza
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August: Osage County​, Tracy Letts
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Ruined, Lynn Nottage
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The Lehman Trilogy, Stefano Massini, Ben Power
2022 Tony Award for Best Play
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A Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson
2022 Tony Award for Best Musical
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