LECCE – Theater without actors. The first Italian radio drama, entirely performed by artificial intelligence, is by a writer from Salento. The idea was in fact born from the San Nicolò area by Alessandro Errico, recently winner of third place in the Don Tonino Bello literary prize (in the metaphysical-civil poetry section), to celebrate 100 years of radio through technological innovation. Thus, the AI interpreted all the roles and voices of Errico’s new theater piece, entitled “L’€redità”. “Innovations bring doubts, fears or frenzy. When technology enters the world of art, those who turn up their noses begin to practice intense and constant criticism. One of the fears linked to the world of representation has become reality”, comments the author.
No longer being able to physically rehearse the parts, as happened in past theatrical performances, Errico “turned” to imaginary creatures, having the machine take the place of the actors. As anticipated on its social pages, it is a radio drama published on its YouTube channel, set in the years of the pandemic: people closed at home, scared of the virus, looking for ways to combat boredom and ready to share their thoughts on social media network.
“The experiment is a path that gives space to the word, when there is a bombardment of words that lose their meaning due to the carelessness with which they are pronounced. The choice of the now obsolete form of radio drama becomes a sort of temporal arc between past and future: the artificial intelligence that recreates human voices, detached from the flesh, brings only words to the stage. The robotic aspect of the story shows the technological coldness of the extrahuman expression, far from the warmth of the corporeal voice. A sort of theater on the radio, via the internet. You can close your eyes to listen to the anxieties and quips typical of contemporaneity, conquered by the opinions fueled by the barrage of anti-scientists and self-taught know-it-alls who set themselves up as masters, but incapable of being janitors” continues the creator of the radio drama, adding how the novelty represents clearly a new form of listening that removes itself from the community, linking it to solitude.
“Perhaps for the first time in Italy this hybrid has been created: human thoughts for artificial voices, a return to the ancient with the technology of the future. The new expressive frontier will make us think even more deeply about the phrase of the great Gigi Proietti: “In the theater everything is fake, but nothing is fake”, he concludes.
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