ACT#2

DARK explores the tension between presence and absence, real and virtual, the human and the numerical. Performed by Mustaf Ahmeti, the triptych — DARK, ACT #2, and BRASS #2 — unfolds like a dialogue between flesh and algorithm. 

Theater maker Kris Verdonck is clearly moved himself by what AI conjured up from his mix of two older audio recordings of Leysen and Beckett texts that Leysen never performed during his lifetime. The result can be heard this week in Dark, Verdonck’s new performance featuring three installations in which dead things are artificially brought to life.

“The installation with Johan, Act#2, is at once a loving tribute and something very macabre. Hearing the voice of a deceased friend hits much more directly than looking at old photographs—especially when he says something he never said.” Until Leysen’s sudden death in March 2023, Verdonck had already created seven productions with him. One particularly memorable example is M, a reflection (2012), in which Leysen was already digitally doubled—then as a hologram with which he shared the stage. “Even outside those creations, we spoke to each other every week.”

Yet this technological resurrection is not a sentimental spectacle. It is above all artistically motivated. Leysen’s voice, emerging between gray blankets, delivers the thirteenth and final text from Texts for Nothing (1952) by Samuel Beckett, in which a speaking “I” dissolves like a ghost into pure language. In 2020, Verdonck and Leysen had already theatricalized the first five parts of this postmodern prose in Act. There were plans for a complete staging of all thirteen texts, but Leysen’s death put an end to that. Dark now fulfills part of those intentions after all. For Verdonck, this AI version fits into a long tradition of ghosts and half-beings on stage, from the Greeks to Hamlet.

“Johan actually considered Beckett’s work pretentious nonsense for a long time—until I introduced him to Texts for Nothing. I remember how, during rehearsals for Act, he suddenly burst into tears at the lines: ‘we are fond of one another, we are sorry for one another, but there it is, there is nothing we can do for one another.’ From then on, he really only wanted to play Beckett. So I’m very happy that I was able to bring these two masters together. If anyone had a multimedia view of theater, it was Beckett. The only thing I still wonder about is what Johan himself would have thought of this performance.”

Does Dark herald a new future with virtual actors? Verdonck himself remains very skeptical about the impact of AI on theater. “If the two of us spent a full ten days working for a meager fifteen minutes of text, then I don’t believe in that great AI revolution. It seems more like a fraudulent advertising campaign by people who want to make a lot of money from billions in state subsidies for something that has barely proven itself. Watching live performers together is also such an ancient practice that it is absolutely irreplaceable.”

For Verdonck, Dark therefore thematizes the absence of live presence rather than proposing a blazing vision of the future. “If this creation makes any statement, it’s mainly that it doesn’t become very exciting when we replace ourselves. What does fascinate me is how our relationship with machines has become completely intimate. We now go to bed with our phones like with a teddy bear. If we have a hemorrhoid problem, we tell Google faster than we tell our partner. There are even love relationships with AI chatbots. Madness, really!”

In addition to the installation with Leysen, Dark also lets three sousaphones play music by themselves and reveals the dark backside of our screens. 

“What kind of monster is hiding behind all that artificial presence in our lives? That is the question of our time.”