Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

I once went to Atlanta to research a play. The story was about the relationship between a young gay Atlanta businessman and the parents he is alienated from who live in a small Southern town. When his parents are hit by an emergency, their son makes an offer that is the basis of the play. One of the reasons I went to Atlanta was to find out if the story I was making up was plausible. One of the people I talked to laughed and said that what I thought I had invented had already occurred. They were people he knew.

This led me to the thought that if something you write in a play can happen it’s likely that it has happened.

This occurred to me again as I watched Matthew Libby’s play, Data, currently running at the Lucille Lortel Theater. The four characters work at an artificial intelligence outfit called Athena Technologies. Maneesh (played by Karan Brar) comes to realize that he was hired because Athena is aware that he created some code that would be useful in a product they are creating for the government. A product that would make deporting immigrants easier. A product that would remove much of the human factor involved in deciding the fates of people he will never see. Except they are people likely to be similar to the parents who brought him to this country. His misgivings and how he tries to act on them (and how the people around him try to influence his actions) are the heart of the show.

This reminds me of the theories of Lawrence Kohlberg. I won’t do him the injustice of trying to summarize his thoughts in an easily-digestible sentence. But one of the things he wrote that stays with me is his idea that the highest level of morality exists when you’re concerned about what the effects of your actions might be on people you will never meet. The company he works for doesn’t concern itself with such matters. Its profits are based on those government contracts, and it leaves to the government any piddly concerns it might have about justice or fair play or ethical behavior. So Maneesh, who hoped to find a nice safe corner where he could be a drone without having any impact on anyone, finds himself being pressured to allow his unique idea to be used for what he believes to be a malign purpose.

And yes, I absolutely believe that there are many Maneeshes facing Athenas as I type this. (Nice touch naming the company after the goddess of wisdom, something for which the company has scant concern.)

Interesting that both this and the other play currently running concerned with AI (Marjorie Prime) were both initially written before the pandemic and before many were debating AI. This reinforces the belief that playwrights are often the canaries in the mine.

Good cast (Karan Brar, Justin H. Min, Brandon Flynn and a particularly strong Sophia Lillis) in a production directed with plenty of snap by Tyne Rafaeli. If you want a bracing shot of theatrical dread, Data will fill the bill.