THE WHITMAN SAMPLER to Open at Fuse Theatre Ensemble

Fuse Theatre Ensemble will present The Whitman Sampler, an improv and sketch show that riffs on Walt Whitman's poetry with AI, playing from November 13-21 at the Back Door Theater.

Artificial intelligence is asking the big questions about humanity in this evolving work from Layer Hendrix-the nom de plume of writing duo Ajai Tripathi and Patrick Hilton, who co-created Great White Goes Down, the final act of Tripathi's 'Great White' trilogy.

The 60-minute multimedia performance will also be performed by Tripathi and Hilton, and promises to explore the life of 'America's bard' in contrast to an AI that is trying to understand his work. Powered by real-time audience feedback, the machine and its output are subject to the crowd's dictation.

Why choose the civil war-era poet to mine for relevance? 'During the nation's greatest divide, Walt Whitman fashioned American character,' Tripathi said. 'When all was being swept up in industry, he embraced the nature of the soul and the earth.'

So what does it mean to be human? The world's first piece of transhuman generative theatre invites you into the body electric, where you don't just watch the story; you customize it. Can Whitman's rawest meditations on the cosmos be harvested to sprout new leaves of digital grass? Or does the song of myself have no algorithm?