my philosophy + Neo-Luddism
- theatre should ask more questions than it answers.
- musical theatre should not be a genre of music unto itself- it should use whatever music best serves the story and message of a given piece.
- AI is fundamentally anti-art and has no place in creative spaces.
- the American theatre is increasingly inaccessible: work should be done to make theatre the art of the working class, both in terms of pricing and subject matter.
- show, don’t tell.
- content dictates form. (thanks Sondheim)
- art, not content.
My creative output largely explores how modern technology has dramatically shifted the ways we communicate and view the world around us, and the multitude of ways that dread manifests in people in response to this change- particularly in the United States. The forces of capital are warping our perceptions of each other exponentially; algorithms and the technocrats that manipulate them have created a culture that is deeply irony-poisoned, self-conscious, and disconnected. My goal as a playwright is to capture dialogue/characters that both demonstrate and rebuke this development in our zeitgeist.
I am personally fascinated by the unique psychological contradictions of things such as influencer culture, content creation, generative AI, and online politics—especially in how they shape the conversations we have about “real” world issues and the big questions that are fundamental for great drama.
Below is a sample manifesto for Neo-Luddism, a viewpoint that I believe could help guide the future of new theatre.
Neo-Luddism
Our (Personal, One-Sentence) Definition: One who rejects our world’s modern dependency on technology in order to create and distribute art.
What that means: As opposed to eschewing all technology/automation, we mainly reject any technology that attempts to mimic or control human creativity. We are anti-AI, anti-algorithm, anti-filter, and anti-clickbait. We accept modern technology as a fact of our world and the benefits it can have for humanity, but understand the slippery-slope of overreliance on technology for creativity. To navigate this, we align ourselves with the following:
ART over CONTENT
LABOR over CAPITAL
PASSION over PROFIT
SKEPTICISM over DOGMA
EMPATHY over HIERARCHY
COMMUNICATION over BUREAUCRACY
SINCERITY over IRONY
SUSTAINABILITY over SPECTACLE
CREATION over REACTION
HUMANITY over TECHNOLOGY
Ben Sellers 