US Theatre Education in the AI Era
American theatre education provides a pathway to reinvigorate the arts and make a meaningful difference for society. Theatre education's distinctive strengths can help overcome ongoing challenges in arts and culture, setting the stage for lasting positive change.
We are at a pivotal moment for the arts, as AI advances rapidly across many disciplines. Try this experiment: ask your phone to create art, design, compose, and produce—all within seconds. You might argue that AI output lacks soul and artistic quality, and you would be right. However, if artists lose their livelihoods, soon we might struggle to distinguish authentic art from AI-generated work. This uncertainty raises crucial questions about the future of creative professions.
This change is like tomatoes: your grandparents’ flavorful ones replaced by today’s bland variety. Each day, fewer people notice, because most have never tasted the real thing. We settle for just fiber from pricey vegetables and vitamin pills for dessert. In the end, we’re all eating the same tomato, grown or bought. The capitalist system has reached the seed of everything, and the arts are at risk of homogenization.
Now try asking AI: “play me the simplest theatre scene with one actor, one word, and one gesture.” What would happen? Your phone would start to overheat, and you might imagine a cell phone tower short-circuiting. This example makes a key point: theatre requires the dynamic presence of actors and audiences—humans. Building on this, theatre practitioners have long argued that the experience of theatre feels more real than daily life, and recent times seem to confirm this. Consider this: what feels more real—observing people while riding the subway, or watching actors pretend to ride the subway? In reality, on the subway you’d likely be looking at your phone, not at other passengers. This is where theatre helps us break free from that addictive cyber trance and separation. After all, we know now that the opposite of addiction is not abstinence, but connection. AI can only benefit the theatre.
Another biblical flood is coming, and the theatre will stay above water. With infinite space, the theatre of the future will welcome everyone—not just artists—and focus on process over product to save lives. When the General Surgeon declared the Epidemic of Loneliness, he overlooked theatre as the cure. This is not about Broadway; revitalization will come from practitioners thriving as professional artists in their communities. As theatre’s potential grows, thousands of troupes will meet the demand, making theatre once again central, echoing the movements of ancient Greece, Elizabethan England, and the Spanish Golden Age.
To understand how theatre arrived at its current state, let’s look at its history. Since it got indoors and turned off the audience lights in the name of illusion, it has always been in crisis. This model culminated in the movies, where not only is the house dark and audiences comfortably disconnected, but there is no one or anything on stage other than illusionistic light. As a result, we lost the thrill of being an audience, and now everyone has their own screen, and movies will cease to be a communal event. Heads up: thousands of movie theatres will be emptied and ready for another use!
The traditional theatre model adopted by American universities since the 1960s cannot accommodate all artists displaced by AI and struggles to employ current graduates. The central question is: how do we open new possibilities for theatre? Although university programs have honed this model and left an invaluable and treasured legacy, they are now disconnected from broader realities. We must acknowledge that theatre arts students and audiences need a model that can meet new demands. Theatre graduates are prepared for a world that barely exists. Accepting the limits of this crisis-driven model, it's time to innovate and embrace risk, experimentation, and failure, paving the way for theatre to thrive in new forms and applications.
American Theatre Education, including all its powerful related organizations, is essential now because it offers resources and opportunities to address challenges from and for young minds. By reimagining its scope and applications, theatre education can have a broader impact for both artists and society, making it an indispensable force in shaping the future.
-Current students are the last generation of artists who have known the world before AI and will still be able to compare “tomatoes”.
-The fact that theatre is attached to universities and colleges, with nearly 6000 institutions, many of them offering theatre degrees, facilitates the interdisciplinary approach these new forms of theatre need.
The last reason lies in one of America's biggest achievements: the existence of theatre, music, and dance in public high schools. There are 25,000 schools, half of which have theatre programs, and 88% of them offer some form of theatre education. This is just public schools.
America is a global powerhouse in theatre education, unmatched, with a responsibility to tackle contemporary challenges, support students' futures, and foster societal healing. This urgency requires action, as recent events, such as those affecting KCACTF, show that we cannot take these resources for granted.
New forms of theatre and theatre applications can bring fulfillment beyond traditional circuits. Theatre education needs this spirit of innovation today. By working with current students to develop new possibilities, we can establish a diverse, human-centered model that allows theatre to pay the bills, preserve the arts, address loneliness and addiction, and occupy its deserved place in society.