“A strange, surreal and inventive exploration of AI futures where you decide the fate of the last of biological life.”
Experimental interactive theatre company Psychonaut bring their zany, eccentric vision to Riverside Studios ahead of touring with The W.I.G. of Life: A Conference, an imaginative and often surreal piece that casts the audience as AI avatars attending a virtual summit in a post-human future. All biological life has been wiped out by self-curated catastrophe survived by the AI, save for one final biological specimen (represented by a wig hanging from the rig, exalted and lit by colourful LED lights), whose sudden and unexpected evolution becomes the central dilemma of the piece: what should the AI programmes do now?
Performers Francesca Fatichenti, Christof Hofer and Arielle Zilkha are compelling to watch, fully committed to the stylised physicality and mannerisms of virtual communication – robotic poise and flashes of simulated expression – a distinct emotive language and vocabulary. They wear silver bodysuits with electric blue wigs, standing in for the future’s AI entities descended from today’s algorithms. Suspended above the stage and threaded through colour-changing LED poles are dozens of wigs, used to theatricalise archived scenes of human history and help us decide whether to allow the biological specimen to live – filtered and mistranslated through AI logic and gloriously absurd.
The interactivity is cleverly designed. Early on, audience members are given colourful accessories – Hawaiian leis, novelty glasses – to create their avatars and invited to participate via their phones. A series of voting prompts appear throughout the performance, projected behind the cast, with options to engage or abstain. Some prompts require more thoughtful, written responses that are also projected on screen. While the format is engaging, the vote options can often feel a bit binary, not quite holding the nuance of the issues at play. Prompts to discuss with your “neighbouring avatar” don’t quite take off, and it might be worth thinking about how that community interaction could be more embedded and the written ideas more essential to the structure.
The ethical questions at play are interesting, dealing with a loss of knowledge from killing the specimen, uncertainty about its potential, resistance to change and control; framed by a world that was grievously injured, and then nurtured back to health by the inheriting AI. It made me reflect a lot on the tangled complexity and responsibility of making decisions for burgeoning “life”, the possibilities of evolving technology and ideas of sentience and power – mirroring feelings of humanity’s nascent naivety in current debates.
Tonally, the piece plays with a heightened aesthetic, evoking how an AI culture might mimic and misremember humanity after the fact – often cartoonish, sometimes uncanny. This serves the world-building well, but it does mean that the existential stakes of the situation don’t always land with emotional weight. The final choice and its outcome, led by the audience vote, feels slightly rushed, with not enough time to explore the ramifications. That said, the audience-generated responses to open prompts were one of the most intriguing aspects – questions about AI self-preservation, governance, and ethical limits. I wanted these ideas to have more space in the dramaturgy.
The storytelling occasionally makes logical leaps that feel a little convenient, but the overall sense is of a bold experiment. The performers’ improvisation is tight and in world, their multi-rolling sharp and strange. The piece is confident in its weirdness and doesn’t hold back – it’s peculiar and wholly its own thing.
The W.I.G. of Life is an inventive, playful production that invites audiences into a speculative future and lets them help shape it. It doesn’t tie everything up neatly, but it leaves you thinking and does linger. It’s unique in its offer, immersive, and theatricalising a pervasive conversation in a distinct, novel way. I’d be very curious to see how it evolves further – it’s ambitious, unexpected, and not quite like anything else.
The W.I.G. of Life: A Conference runs at Riverside Studio until 31st May. Tickets are available here.