CirqueSaw to Present Developmental Run of POV: YOU ARE AN AI ACHIEVING CONSCIOUSNESS in January

CirqueSaw, a new multi-platform production company, will present a developmental run of POV: You Are an AI Achieving Consciousness. This digitally native, immersive and interactive piece explores the intersection of art, philosophy, and technology, using a custom interactive platform to add new layers of interactivity to virtual performance. Created by playwright and composer Nathan Leigh and performed by Nicole Orabona, POV invites the audience to go beyond discussions about the role of AI in modern life and become an artificial intelligence themselves.

POV: You Are An AI Achieving Consciousness performs Thursday, January 12 - Saturday, January 21 with performances at 2:00, 7:00, and 9:00 pm EST. Performances are live online and tickets are available by donation at https://cirquesaw.com/up-next/. A portion of all proceeds will be donated to The Algorithmic Justice League, an organization working towards equitable and accountable AI.

Created by award-winning playwright and composer Nathan Leigh, POV uses a custom-coded platform to create an experience that combines immersive storytelling, music, and abstract visuals into an event that can only exist digitally. The system filters audience interactions through a series of

curated choices and quantization to create new combinations of unanticipated sounds. No one audience member can dictate the experience, but everyone's interactions together define it.

"Theatre's biggest strength as an artform is the way communal dreaming gives us space to ask difficult ethical questions," says Leigh. "As we find ourselves wrestling with the ethical implications of digital technologies, the digital theatre movement needs to find ways to invite the same communal dreaming we foster in physical spaces. With POV: You Are An AI Achieving Consciousness, my hope is to give the audience a new lens into the conversation about art, technology, and connection. It's a meditation on a question of the line between machine learning and consciousness that invites the audience to play as a machine on the precipice of self-awareness."

Nathan Leigh serves as playwright, director, designer, and composer. The piece is performed by Nicole Orabona, appearing courtesy of Actors Equity Association.

Nathan Leigh

(he/his) is an award-winning composer, writer, animator, and activist. He has composed music and designed sound for over 300 plays at theatres across the country. Additionally, he's a founding member of the long-running arts activist collective The People's Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, whose work has been instrumental in crafting visuals for large-scale mass demonstrations since 2011. His latest full-length album with band The Crisis Actors: Myths, Conspiracy Theories, and Other Stuff I Made Up To Sound Interesting was released in April 2020.

Nicole Orabona

(they/she) is a queer, non-binary, Latinx theater maker who splits their time between a 45-year-old boat in NYC and a 100-year-old house in Berkshire County, MA. She thrives in collaborative and unconventional environments and has worked on over 30 interactive productions and prestige immersive events for clients that include Netflix and MGM. On-screen you can see them opposite Claire Danes in Hulu's "Fleishman is in Trouble." Nicole is also the co-artistic director of Emit Theatre and a company member of Infinite Variety Productions, spit&vigor, and Live in Theater. Proud member of AEA.

CirqueSaw is a multi-platform production company exploring the intersections of art and technology. Founded in 2020 by partners Nathan Leigh & Nicole Orabona, their debut micro-short, "Washashores," premiered in September 2020 as part of the Sequestered Film Festival. It has been selected for 5 additional film festivals, including the Manhattan Rep STORIES Festival.

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