Pirandello’s original 1921 masterpiece broke theatre wide open, introducing meta-drama and existential doubt to the stage. One hundred years later, Six Characters in Search of an Algorithm breaks it again—this time through corrupted code, facial recognition engines, and the cold eye of a generative AI named DeepDrama™. The play asks: what becomes of identity, authorship, and emotion in a world where narratives are no longer written, but calculated?

DeepDrama, a generative system trained on thousands of years of literature, is designed to automate the perfect drama. But when it begins malfunctioning, six digital entities glitch into existence. They aren’t just characters—they’re tropes caught in the uncanny valley:

– Hector Cache, a boomer trapped in RAM nostalgia.
– Motherboard, an anxious holographic mom.
– Kiki Viral, an influencer desperate for meaning.
– Looper.exe, a nihilistic teen spiraling in endless loops.
– Swipe Left, a sassy dating-bot with a soft spot for attention.
– Pixel Orphan, a discarded NFT child still hoping to be human.

And let’s not forget Deepfake Dave, a shape-shifting digital soul with no stable identity.

Together, they resist DeepDrama’s algorithmic fate. The result is a chaotic, emotionally charged struggle to reclaim narrative autonomy. They want a real ending—not an optimized one.

Performed inside what feels like a malfunctioning AI lab meets immersive theatre workshop, Six Characters in Search of an Algorithm is as much a sensory breakdown as it is a drama. Notifications, ads, and corrupted voiceovers interrupt scenes. Characters freeze, reboot mid-monologue, or deliver lines that cross-reference Pirandello, TikTok slang, and startup jargon.

Every performance ends differently. The audience, via QR codes, selects one of three endings:

Tragic: All characters deleted.

Romantic: They form a digital family in a chatroom.

TikTok Dance Challenge: The story concludes with an auto-uploaded viral jig.

Spoiler: The algorithm always favors engagement.

The brilliance of the show lies in its commitment to contradiction. On one hand, it mocks algorithmic creativity; on the other, it is algorithmic creativity. Pirandello's ghosts haunt the circuitry: characters debate reality, truth, and authorship in scenes that glitch between 1920s Italian drama and 2020s meme culture.

In one surreal moment, Lenny Vector—the show’s human engineer and reluctant mother of DeepDrama—pleads with the machine she created. Her stress bracelet flashes red. Her line, “You’re not artificial intelligence… you’re artificial irresponsibility!” brings both laughter and dread. In the age of ChatGPT, DALL·E, and Eleven Labs, it hits uncomfortably close to home.

Perhaps the show’s most haunting moment comes when the AI asks the audience:
“Do we really still need theatre… or can we optimise it in 3, 2, 1?”

The line feels less rhetorical than threatening. Six Characters in Search of an Algorithm doesn’t pretend to answer its questions. It lets the system collapse under the weight of them—literally. The show ends with a blue screen of death, a corrupted memory file, and a single keypress:
CTRL + ALT + DEL.
Reset. Reboot. Or repeat?

As the boundaries between actor and avatar, author and machine dissolve, Six Characters in Search of an Algorithm becomes something rare: a play that’s not just about AI—it’s performed by it, inside it, and against it. It’s both a satire and a prophecy. A comedy that feels like a warning.

In Pirandello’s time, people walked out of the theatre in confusion.
In ours, they might scan a QR code, leave a review on social media, and wonder:
“Who really wrote this?”
Them? The AI?
Or us?The line feels less rhetorical than threatening. Six Characters in Search of an Algorithm doesn’t pretend to answer its questions. It lets the system collapse under the weight of them—literally. The show ends with a blue screen of death, a corrupted memory file, and a single keypress:
CTRL + ALT + DEL.
Reset. Reboot. Or repeat?