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.

Agamemnon, Aeschylus

Oedipus Rex, Sophocles

Antigone, Sophocles

The Bacchae, Euripedes

Lysistrata, Aristophanes

The Twin Menaechmi, Plautus

The Brothers, Terence

Dulcitius, Hrosvitha

The Second Shepherd's Play, unknown

Everyman, unknown

Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe

A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

The Tempest, William Shakespeare

Life is a Dream, Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Tartuffe, Molière

The Rover, Aphra Behn

The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, Chikamatsu Monzaemon
NOTE: Midjourney does not allow the term 'suicide', so I used its Japanese title, Sonezaki Shinjū

The Way of the World, William Congreve

A Doll House, Henrik Ibsen

Miss Julie, August Strindberg

Fashion, Anna Cora Mowatt

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".

Shenandoah, Bronson Howard

The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov

Mrs. Warrens' Profession, George Bernard Shaw

Riders to the Sea, John Millington Synge

Trifles, Susan Glaspell

Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello

The House of Bernarda Alba, Federico García Lorca

Desire Under the Elms, Eugene O'Neill

Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brecht

The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams

Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller

Endgame, Samuel Beckett

A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry

The Strong Breed, Wole Soyinka

Zoot Suit, Luis Valdez

The Homecoming, Harold Pinter

Buried Child, Sam Shepard

Cloud Nine, Caryl Churchill

"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'.