VIDEO: New Musical BEYOND THE FENCE, With Computer-Generated Book and Score, Heads To West End

It's a bit of an old joke that some musicals seem so standard that it's like they were written by just feeding all the basic elements into a computer, but while BEYOND THE FENCE, set for a West End debut in February, was wasn't exactly spat out of a machine ready to rehearse, computer technology has been used to make creative decisions about the book, music and lyrics.

The process, as explained on beyondthefencemusical.com, began with scientists. Dr. James Robert Lloyd, Dr. Alex Davies and Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter (Cambridge University), who conducted a data analysis of success in musical theatre. (The language used in promotional material stresses the goal to write a "hit" musical rather than what might be considered an artistically good musical.) They considered cast size, backdrop, emotional structure and the importance of someone falling love and/or dying to create a set of constraints to which the musical had to conform in order to, theoretically, be successful.

Their data was taken to what's known as the What-If Machine at Goldsmiths, University of London. Under the guidance of Prof. Simon Colton, Dr. Maria Teresa Llano and Dr. Rose Hepworth, the machine generated multiple central premises and main characters. The team selected this as the starting point and the original idea for the musical:

What if a wounded soldier had to learn how to understand a child in order to find true love?

Dr. Pablo Gervás (Complutense University of Madrid) helped generate a plot structure utilizing a new analysis of musical theatre narratives that enabled him to adapt an existing story-telling computer system, called PropperWryter, to build a narrative arc.

All of this information enabled the team to identify a suitable setting, Greenham Common, the Royal Air Force base that from 1981-2000 was the site of the Women's peace camp, a protest against the decision of the British government to allow cruise missiles to be based there.

The book and lyrics, fitted to these constraints, were written with the assistance of other computational tools. Set in September 1982, BEYOND THE FENCE tells the story of Mary and her daughter George who are celebrating one year of living at the Greenham Common peace camp. The group of women they have joined are all committed to stopping the arrival of US cruise missiles through non-violent protest. When Mary is faced with losing her child to the authorities, an unlikely ally is found in US Airman Jim Meadow.

Music was provided by Dr. Nick Collins' (Durham University) computer composition system he calls Android Lloyd Webber based on a machine listening analysis of musical theatre music, conducted by Dr. Bob Sturm (QMUL) and Dr. Tillman Weyde (City University). Additional computer music material will be generated using the FlowComposer system created by Dr. Pierre Roy and Dr. Francois Pachet (SonyCSL, Paris).

From there on, the human element takes over in terms of rehearsals and performances, although there's no mention of how potential revisions may be handled. BEYOND THE FENCE is scheduled to run from February 22nd - March 5th at London's Arts Theatre. The production will be directed by Luke Sheppard and choreographed by Cressida Carre.