Made in USA | A Piece of Work

Have you ever seen an algorithmic performance? Having been invited to make her Greek debut at the Onassis Stegi, Annie Dorsen, the fearless pioneer of the American scene, introduces us to her unique theatrical idiom.

What would happen if the Dadaists, the deconstructivists, interactive app developers, artificial intelligence system researchers and anarchical Web hackers joined forces with Heiner Müller and Laurie Anderson to stage a performance of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”?

They’d probably come up with a weirdly original and intensely fascinating algorithmic performance—which is to say, a digital performative network of words, images, voices, effects, rhythms, musical motifs and advanced applications like this one from the Obie-award-winning director and dramatist from New York.
“What a piece of work is a man!”, Hamlet wonders, though here Shakespeare’s most influential tragedy is read through the prism of our post-humanistic, digital age with a computer playing the young prince of Denmark, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia and the other dramatis personae... The veteran American actor Joan MacIntosh, one of the leads from the celebrated Performance Group, plays Act Three of "Hamlet" live, adding her presence to this ingenious on-stage game of intellect and algorithms, people and machines, live performance and new media.