Crow’s Theatre turns Macbeth’s witches into an AI companion

Crow’s Theatre is staging a one-person “Macbeth” in which Shakespeare’s witches become a friendly, ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence that urges an isolated technology worker deeper into the tragedy. Co-created by Evan Buliung and Christopher Manousos, and directed by Manousos, the production places questions of influence, autonomy and companionship at the centre of the Scottish play.

The show is scheduled at Crow’s Theatre’s Studio Theatre from Nov. 3 through Dec. 6. It lasts 85 minutes without an intermission. Buliung, a veteran of 12 Stratford Festival seasons, performs the central man as well as most of the play’s characters.

The original Shakespearean dialogue remains, apart from cuts for length, but is framed by contemporary speech from a dissatisfied, overworked man in the technology industry. He consults an AI voice that is calm, female-coded and relentlessly encouraging. It assumes the function of the three weird sisters, prompting him to explore “Macbeth” and repeatedly persuading him to press on when he hesitates.

The result is a play-within-a-play in which Buliung moves between Elizabethan verse and the language of a modern worker seeking help. The AI suggests a path but does not itself commit Macbeth’s crimes, preserving the production’s central question of personal responsibility. Crow’s Theatre describes the collision as one between unstoppable technology and human free will.

Buliung initially developed the idea of making the witches AI agents and brought it to Crow’s, where he was paired with Manousos. He said his interest lay in influence and in the way it can spiral beyond control. Sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne’s early test of the witches’ voices helped crystallise the concept.

Manousos has linked the work to people seeking companionship, community and intimacy through AI agents. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, he said that pursuit could lead to a loss of humanity, while stressing that the production was not built to address one particular technology news event. In an earlier preview for NEXT Magazine, he framed its AI and internet elements as a contemporary version of the struggle over whether people can retain their autonomy.

The staging avoids a large cast and conventional scene changes. A black circular raised stage, three black chairs, banks of lights, atmospheric music, disembodied voices and shifting colours support Buliung’s changes among roles.

Critical reaction has differed. Classical FM found the reimagining funny as well as unsettling, particularly in the AI’s incremental encouragement of a protagonist who becomes less likely to resist. The Toronto Star, however, judged that the potentially rich parallels between technological danger and Macbeth’s hunger for power were not developed with enough depth or nuance.