This Piece May Not Be Fed Into Any LLM or Other AI Software for Any Reason Whatsoever

Notes from the Field

By Kate Brennan

I recently heard that a large theatre organization screened plays for a competition by feeding them into a large language model (LLM). Then, I read two more accounts on a playwriting forum about other theatres that did this for marketing or public relations purposes. A couple of months ago, this happened to me firsthand. I learned that a theatre put a draft of my new play into an LLM to generate marketing materials. I expressed my concern to the theatre immediately, and I corresponded with a lawyer at the Dramatists Guild of America who gave me language that I could incorporate into my plays moving forward.

The increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) in our field is disturbing for a variety of reasons, from its devastating environmental impact to its detrimental cognitive effects—both of which seem woefully underreported .

I acknowledge that theatre as an art form is suffering “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” at present. We are besieged by the evisceration of arts funding, the gouging of programs, the dismantling of an established system, aggressive technological advancement, mind fracking in an attention economy, and shifting and emerging platforms, all while we are still struggling to re-stabilize in the wake of a pandemic. The list goes on, but there are seasons to plan, grants to write, audiences to woo, and education programs to staff.

We have been encouraged to embrace AI. The genie is out of the bottle, people say, throwing up their hands, This is the way the world is going — better learn it! Companies use it to screen applicants, and then applicants use it to tailor resumes. Students use it to write papers; professors use it to create lessons plans to stop students from using it to write papers. And yes, that last link is to a satire article, but like all good satire, it is based in truth. In fact, in “ChatGPT: Put My Resumé at the Top of the Pile,” Erik Gorelick cites World Economic Forum data that says, “roughly 90 percent of employers now use A.I. to filter or rank résumés.”

If theatres start using AI to screen submissions, should artists then use it to craft cover letters for those submissions? If the artist’s initial audience is AI, then who better to converse with it than AI itself?

We are an ouroboros munching our tail. Do we even realize it? It’s going to get challenging when we get to the head.

As an arts field, we must be more intentional about our approach to this technology. The world is trying to whisk us away with its flashy quick fixes, its hair-dye hucksters, its traveling rainmakers. But that is not our work. Our work is about time. About place. About people.

Creating a play or a musical can take years of labor. It is work. It is research, it is writing, it is editing, it is recording and correspondence; it is readings and workshops and meetings and emails and Zooms and ideating and envisioning and reenvisioning and collaborating and coordinating and facilitating and travel and submissions (and submissions and submissions and submissions). It is time. It is labor. And when a writer’s work is fed into an LLM without their consent, it is piracy.

We are an ouroboros munching our tail. Do we even realize it? It’s going to get challenging when we get to the head.

Is AI helping us accomplish more faster so we can become/create/sell a better product? Are we using it to replace other artists’ work that is better, more thoughtful, and more authentic? Is the goal to move faster than the speed of human being? To exceed our capacities as mortals? If so, it feels like we are missing the point of theatre entirely.

If we cease to honor theatre’s creative process and its foundation in humanity, we will lose the moral compass of our art form.

In 2025, Anthropic settled a landmark AI copyright infringement lawsuit that required the company to compensate authors from whom it illegally mined material.

As we collectively stumble forward, we must hold each other up. We must continue to protect the work and the people who do it.

Writers must be given the opportunity to consent to their work being fed into AI.

The speed at which technology is adapting and being widely adopted has eclipsed the protections we have for the creators who are the lifeblood of our field, and we must do something about it.

Notes from a Director

By Dr. Rachel Anderson-Rabern 

My teenage son is so excited about speed, speed, more speed! He glories in AI music generators that allow users to select genre and topic. He is fully Aristotelian, his attention captured by the climb. We debate, sometimes, about the purpose of pace generally. Where are we trying to get to, I ask? What’s the urgency, what’s the rush? What’s the peak? I’ve never felt my gray hairs burn as brightly as they do during those conversations.

He tells me things like, “Technology saves us time. It increases human capacity, explores human potential.”

“Hmmm,” I say. And I look around. So many of us are so tired. 

I look at the faces of my students and collaborators. I revel in working in a field that’s AI proof because it is live. It resists replication, substitution; it requires bodies and hearts and present responses. 

Or so I thought. 

Playwrights are magical creatures who, like the rest of us, aren’t in it for the money. Must we feed their work into the machine? Must we steal the soul of their craft?

There’s a whole apparatus inside this field, running through its arteries, that isn’t AI-proof at all. Words. Images. The marketing materials, including posters (Students at my college protested when a staff member used AI to create a poster advertising student new work). The play. New plays. New play submission processes.

I think increasingly about the craftspeople who play with words, shape their hearts into new stories for this moment, ride crests of impulse and creativity and idealism from gig to gig. I think about writers. Years ago, I surveyed women artists in New York and learned that one well known, prize-winning playwright sold her eggs—after securing prestigious awards—to keep the lights on. Playwrights are magical creatures who, like the rest of us, aren’t in it for the money. Must we feed their work into the machine? Must we steal the soul of their craft? When it comes to selling eggs, at least they get to decide.

My son tells me about his curiosity. He wants to see what we’ll eventually do/produce with all our speed. Again, I hear the assumption of an arrival point that will never come, that will always recede. I keep thinking, no wonder capitalism now embraces wellness industries that promise to teach us to anchor in the present (does your meditation app subscription auto-renew?). Most of us don’t know how to be present, though live theatre is an excellent, app-free tutor. Like my son, we often persist in running from the present toward the next and next and next, toward an imagined future point of perspective or satiation. That’s great for teenagers, it’s par for the developmental stage. What about the rest of us? 

Are we so pressed, so rushed, that we’ve forgotten the most basic motivation that’s in the air all around us? Pleasure. The pleasure of making, of reading, of sharing. My friend Kate writes her plays in the snatches of time she has between so many everyday moments. She makes that time, somehow, out of air and will. She makes those stories. Why resist the LLM, the AI? Because our theatre world is full of Kates, and we get to read and work with what they have labored to bring us. We get to be present with their presence. It’s not just about ethics and intellectual property, though it is very much that too. It’s also about remembering to center our creative selves and our collective pleasure within acts of imagination that are present and human.

We get to read the play. And then make the play. I guarantee that the software doesn’t care. We can and we do.

Notes from a Playwright

By David Lee White 

The AI problem didn't necessarily start with the technology. It started when we decided that we could create successful art by boiling it down to its essential components. This seldom results in transformative art. It results in cheap, forgettable knock-offs. In writing programs all over the country, students are taught to write formulaically to sell their work. I'd argue that these formulas do nothing but clog up the pipeline, making genuine expressions of creativity harder to find. This has always been true, but the proliferation of AI work has the potential to make it exponentially worse. We are about to be immersed in useless, thoughtless writing that sounds eloquent but is merely the empty regurgitation of things that have already been said more clearly.

In the film world, this is called “exploitation.” The people being exploited are not the artists, but the audience. The “exploitation films” of the sixties, seventies, and eighties took the essential components of successful movies and created low-budget, money-saving films that emulated art. And while some filmmakers were able to express themselves through this technique, their primary goal was to make money. It was the transformation of creativity into pure product.

We are about to be immersed in useless, thoughtless writing that sounds eloquent but is merely the empty regurgitation of things that have already been said more clearly.

The race between the laborer and technology isn't new. It's been going on since the industrial revolution began. Take a look at the story of John Henry—the fable about a railroad worker who drives holes into rock with his giant hammer. In a race with a steam drill that does the task exponentially faster, Henry wins, but his heart gives out due to stress.

Yes, technology always winds up sticking around and changing the culture—sometimes for the better—but it also winds up exploiting workers. In this case, the laborers are playwrights. It would be nice if we decided to find a way to navigate this industrial exploitation for once in our history, rather than just accepting it as part of the natural order. Moreover, it’s one thing to create a machine that makes building a railroad faster. But too many people are content to let AI actually drive the train.

Actions:

We have reached out to Dramatist and the National New Play Network (NNPN), and both had swift meetings regarding the issue.

Moving forward, we propose the following actions:

• Draft a petition to circulate amongst playwrights and development organizations regarding the use of AI to raise awareness about the issue, promote discussion, and encourage organizations and individuals to draft guidelines for their organizations and work.
• Share this information in your own writing group to generate discussion around the subject.
• Point out the use of AI in our field so there can be open discourse surrounding the propriety of use.
• Disseminate legal language to all writers and marketing teams to include on their work:
  • In marketing: “The theatre acknowledges and agrees that no AI generated text, images, etc will be used in connection with the marketing, promotion or advertising of the production.”
  • On scripts: “This piece may not be fed into any LLM or other AI software for any reason whatsoever.”

And I guess now we have to add this as an addendum everywhere, even here:

“This piece may not be fed into any LLM or other AI software for any reason whatsoever.”