The Dramaturg in the Machine: Integrating Virtual Production and GenAI into the Development of Live Theatre

Abstract

This article investigates how virtual production (VP) technologies and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can be reimagined as dramaturgical instruments in the early stages of live theatre development. Using the Afrofuturist play When We Marched as a case study, we explore how real-time VP tools, including an LED volume, enable collaborative narrative design, previsualisation, and interdisciplinary co-creation. The play, which examines the global reverberations of George Floyd’s death across past, present, and (speculative) futures, interrogates the ripple effects of racial violence, particularly as experienced by Black communities in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Our practice-led research repositions the VP Studio from a postproduction cinematic tool to a dynamic preproduction dramaturgical environment – what we term the Dramaturgical Volume. This conceptual shift enables the co-evolution of dramaturgy, design, and writing within a shared visual-immersive framework. We argue that the early and intentional involvement of a technology dramaturg materially transforms this creative process by mediating between technological affordances and narrative logic – becoming an ethical interlocutor in digital-real hybridity.

As artificial intelligence evolves rapidly, we are confronted by the emerging impact of AI on all creative design processes. We urgently consider the possibilities afforded by this rapid technological change within our framework. Instead of framing technological dramaturgy as a solo role, our revised model includes three dramaturgical agents: the technology dramaturg, who facilitates narrative-technological translation; the creative technologist, who bridges human-machine interaction; and a GenAI system (nonhuman intelligence) embedded within the VP environment. This triadic structure fosters a multi-intelligential dramaturgy – a co-creation process that is human, machinic, and speculative.

By proposing a dramaturgical model grounded in ethical experimentation, digital hybridity, and synthetic co-intelligence, this article contributes to emerging discourse on AI in performance, and positions virtual production and AI as catalysts for amplifying Black and Indigenous worldbuilding in theatre’s technologically integrated futures.