The McNeal Case

Venue: DT Stage - Jacob McNeal is the prime example of the proverbial old white man. He seems to be the prototype of masculinity today branded as toxic: a famous American writer in his late 60s, a charismatic with a drinking problem and disturbing honesty, prominent, successful, expansive. For his works, he exploited and ruined himself, his relationships and his health without regard for losses. But at the height of his fame (Nobel Prize in Literature) and at the end of his life (liver cirrhosis), his past catches up with him. And at the same time, a technology that is changing literary production is overtaking him: artificial intelligence that is able to produce texts at breakneck speed — proven to be suitable for bestsellers.

In terms of content and form, the piece is one of the great poetological foundations: the fact that literature is rarely completely original and that every author is always a reader at first and then also exploits their own stories and the stories of those around them. Reading, he or she consciously or unconsciously works on other works with their own work, just like the AI, which must also be fed with texts and data so that it can write something.

Will the future of art be one in which mediocrity produced cheaply and quickly painlessly and silently floods the world, which no longer hurts anyone but entertains and distracts many? And what will AI be in the future in an art context: toys, assistants, or initial competition? Are new media also redefining the limits of what can be said, for example by suppressing the portrayal of suicide and violence, racism and misogyny as no longer desired? And last but not least: Can theatre be one of the last places of analog community and potentially anarchic opportunities to assert itself against digital uniformity and isolation, which is already spreading rapidly and leading to a whole new form of loneliness and influenceability, because it is often no longer clear what is real and what is fake?

The McNeal Case explores all these questions — as a thought-provoking well-made play based on technological, moral and literary theory issues.