Agile Lens to Premiere THE HARMNF at Caveat NYC in November
The performance will take place on Sunday, November 30 at 2:30 PM.
As debates about AI and creativity rage on, The Harmnf turns that conversation into a live experiment - a talk that breaks down in real time as human and machine try (and fail) to understand each other.
In The Harmnf, writer-performer Kevin (as a robot) Laibson takes the stage in a VR headset to deliver a lecture about his real-life experience adapting Anton Chekhov's The Harmfulness of Tobacco using AI tools. What begins as an artist talk quickly unravels into glitching slides, unfinished anecdotes, and confessions of creative collapse. Funny, disorienting, and unexpectedly tender, the piece becomes a meditation on failure, alienation, and our uneasy relationship with technology.
Part XR performance, part tragicomedy, The Harmnf is both a cautionary tale and a love letter to human error - where connection collides with machine logic.
Produced by Agile Lens, The Harmnf marks the first public, professional performance to use Agile Lens's new live-performance XR platform, Stage Presence - a real-time motion-capture and virtual-production tool currently in development. The system allows a performer in a VR headset to be "present" simultaneously for both live and virtual audiences, expanding the language of hybrid theater.
The piece, directed by Parker Denton, premiered at The Brick's Interrobang Festival and has since been presented at Worlds in Play and Young Ethel's Bar & Stage, evolving with each iteration to reflect the rapidly changing conversation around AI and art. The Caveat performance will be its first full New York presentation.
About the Artist
Kevin (as a robot) Laibson is a director, producer, and educator working at the intersection of live performance and emerging technology. Former Artistic Director of The Peoples Improv Theater and Magic Futurebox, he currently serves as Senior Experience Director at Agile Lens, leading XR performance research in collaboration with institutions such as the Royal Shakespeare Company and NYU. His work has been featured at SXSW, SIGGRAPH, IEEE-GEM, SVA, and Rutgers University, as well as at venues including National Sawdust, The Flea, Joe's Pub, Abrons Arts Center, and more.
As a performer, Laibson has appeared in Off Rail (Raindance Immersive, FIVARS), the improvisational duo Calvin & Craig, Brandon Powers' Theatre Royale (including as Estragon in Waiting for Godot at Lincoln Center, but in Fortnite), Sidecoach, and Public / Private at the Ace Hotel.
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