Arts in EducationBehind The ScenesStories

Tackling AI with Art: Read about our new touring show ‘Muse It or Lose It’

Notes from the show’s director and PIA’s Associate Director & Head of Education, Erica Lovell:

As both a theatre maker and an educator, I’ve always been drawn to the intersection of performance and pedagogy. Muse It or Lose It is a testament to the transformative power of language, literature, and live performance—three forces that have the ability to shape how young people engage with the world around them. With this show, we set out to ignite students’ imaginations, challenge their perceptions of creativity in the digital age, and ultimately reaffirm the importance of artistic expression in education.

Over my working life, alongside my pursuit of an arts career as an actor, director, and producer, I’ve always been involved in education in one form or another. From tutoring English when I was at uni, to teaching co and extra-curricular drama, to obtaining my teaching qualification and teaching high school English and Drama.

I saw early on the profound impact performance-based approaches and theatre in education can have across diverse KLAs as my after-school drama students began to excel in English following the study of poetry and Shakespeare in my drama classes. I knew that students would always comprehend better that which they experience with multiple senses than that which they simply read. Be it viewing a performance which they experience visually, aurally, and even bodily as they absorb the information in a novel space, or even better – performing the words. This way of learning is uniquely corporeal, something no computer program, no matter how advanced the code, no matter how enlightened the AI, can ever replicate.

While marking our annual poetry competition last year, the flood of AI generated entries was not only disappointing, but deeply distressing. The notion that young people believe an algorithm can create something more valuable than their own spirit is depressing to say the least. This is why a show like Muse It Or Lose It is so important.

The show not only introduces students to some technical aspects of poetic composition, but affirms that human creativity is critical to our capacity to live vibrant, fulfilling lives. Only through self-expression can we grapple with our struggles, revel in our joys, and grow in our understanding of what it means to be human.

It was very important to me that the Muses, humorously referred to as AI – Artistic Immortals in the play, did not read as some kind of supernatural version of AI, a force greater than the human spirit to be relied upon for creativity. As our actors and I worked together to bring the Muses to life, we worked to find their flaws, their struggles with their immortality, so that the Muses would be learning from the humans as much as they would help inspire art. It was a joy to explore ways to make them dynamic and contemporary, from Erato’s flamboyant love of love ballads, to Calliope’s obsession with the epic battle of wits in rap. We wanted the Muses to learn from humanity, to be fascinated with it, and so Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy, finds themselves obsessively fascinated with suffering as a glorious example of the fragile beauty of being human. And Thalia, the Muse of comedy, learns that while laughter is great medicine for a lot of ailments, a gentle guiding hand and a hug is oftentimes better.

It is my hope that in viewing Muse It Or Lose It, students are inspired to explore their own creativity, to channel their experiences into art, and have new appreciation for the unique, magical, and essential value of human creativity.

Erica Lovell
Associate Director & Head of Education