On Thursday, March 6, Vancouver Island University’s theatre department premiered their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—the immensely popular William Shakespeare play filled with Athenian lovers, fairy mischief and magic, and even Mechanicals—whatever those are supposed to be.

Spoiler alert: the Mechanicals aren’t Shakespeare’s interpretation on robots, or cyborgs, or something cooler. They’re just menial labourers and lousy actors (the characters, not the real-life actors—in this case, they were phenomenal).

If you didn’t get a chance to see the play, you missed out (seriously, huge fumble). Shakespeare’s play is notoriously difficult to adapt, but the cast and crew of VIU’s theatre program rose to the challenge.

In particular, the stage design was stellar, the lighting was fantastic, and the acting performances of characters such as the four lovers (played by Andrew Hicks, Aimee Sweetapple, Evan Shumka, and Kaylin Zech), Mechanical Nick Bottom (played by Rigby Mugridge), and Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow (played by Delaney Irving), were notable standouts.

What a great production it was. Another success for the arts, for local theatre, for student artistry.

Right?

Well, of course… But whether you attended the play or not, if you’ve at all been on VIU’s Nanaimo campus or browsed any related social media leading up to the play, you’ve likely seen or heard about the Theatre department’s controversial poster.

I distinctly remember the first time I saw the advertisement myself and the audible Huh? that left my lips.

“That can’t be AI, can it?” I asked myself, certain of what I was seeing with my own eyes, but in genuine disbelief.

Surely a university arts program with such clear and direct lines to not only an entire Visual Arts department but to so many individual artists would simply recruit and support local artists rather than use generative AI. Right?

…Right?

On opening night, the Malaspina Theatre Instagram page posted an entire art class’s worth of illustrations and paintings based on the play—many of which would have made for a fantastic poster. 

So why opt for an AI-generated design? It’s hard to say.

Visual Arts student Angela Traynor explains that by the time the theatre approached her class with a proposal for collaboration, the AI poster had already been mass printed and distributed both online and physically all over campus.

“The chance for a student to put ‘poster design’ on their resume was impossible,” Traynor says. “That the Theatre department directly took work experience away from another branch of the university is nothing short of astonishing … it is disheartening enough to know that AI art is taking work away from your future.”

The concerns with the usage and further implementation of AI on university campuses are ever-present. If you’re a student in any capacity, you’ve likely heard all about AI models like ChatGPT and DALL-E. If you’re a professor—Oh, boy—I’m sure you’ve heard even more. While the ethics of generative AI seem fairly clear-cut for artists, discussions surrounding AI usage are still contentious among many.

“Does this reflect the attitude of the university toward the prospects of its graduates?” Traynor asks. “How can [VIU] ask the students to refrain from using AI when they do it themselves? What does this mean for myself and my fellow students?”

All great questions that I unfortunately don’t have the answers for. And since I don’t, I decide to then sit down with the director of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Chair of VIU’s theatre department, and originator of the infamous poster image, Leon Potter.

When Potter and I meet, I ask if he was surprised by the community’s reaction to the poster.

“I wasn’t, no, I wasn’t overly surprised,” he says. “Think about what … what is a poster supposed to do?”

“Garner attention,” I say. “Naturally.”

“Exactly. Maybe even create discussion. Maybe even get people talking.”

“So, do you think it was a success on that front? Garnering attention for the show?”

“I don’t know if the turnout was better or worse … but it certainly created conversation. Would we do it again? I guess that’s probably the question that a lot of people are talking about,” Potter says. “I think there’s an assumption of, well, you did it once, so now you’re just going to use AI forever. And no, of course not. We do everything that we can to collaborate [on campus] whenever we get the chance to.”

It’s unclear if the Theatre department plans on using AI in future productions, but Potter doesn’t rule it out. “Rest assured, it’s certainly not something we’re going to do every single time,” he says.

So why use AI this time, then?

Potter highlights the importance of familiarizing ourselves with new technology. “I think it’s partially our job to explore what [AI] is capable of, isn’t it? Because if we ignore it, what are we doing? It would be like ignoring the printing press or ignoring computers when they came out. Or people who said, well, ‘Television is just a fad. It’s gonna phase out.’ I think the same thing is happening with AI,” he explains.

In part, it seems that Potter’s decision to employ generative AI was based on a feeling of responsibility to adapt and advance for theatre’s sake. “It’s not that AI is good or bad—it’s more about [AI being] a tool that we can use to help us as artists, right? To help us create,” he says. “I think it would be remiss of us not to at least explore how we might be able to use it.”

Our conversation drifts for over an hour through the ethics of using AI, the artistic merit of it, or the lack thereof. We both agree that AI work, especially writing, has a coldness to it that it is desperately missing the warmth of a human’s soul.

What doesn’t lack in spirit and warmth is theatre itself.

Fantastic human elements are present all throughout the production, a vibrancy some risk missing amongst the controversy of this AI poster. The focus has been turned on what isn’t, rather than what is.

“It’s an enormous source of pride for an instructor when audiences come in and you can say: ‘This set was built and painted by students. The lights were being run by students. The costumes were built by students. The sound is designed by students,’” Potter says.

Potter assures me that door’s never shut. “In fact, it would be really nice to open it wider,” Potter says. “Come and talk to us. Say, ‘I’m an art student, let me do a pitch for your posters.’”

You heard him, folks. Non-AI art and posters to the front of the line, please! VIU’s theatre department is built on the backs of dozens and dozens of human artists, and you could be one of them.

That being said, the AI poster still stings for many artists, myself included. Though, it must be stated that in these contentious creative times, we all owe it to ourselves and our respective artforms to have these open dialogues over artistic ethics and values.

We artists also have an obligation to continue producing authentic, organic work—something that cannot be pressed enough that the entire student cast and crew of A Midsummer Night’s Dream did.

So, to all of those human artists, I say: congratulations on yet another successful show.

And to those with bleeding hearts who are sick and tired of these foolish debates over AI, I leave you with the wise words of the mischievous fairy Puck: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”