A man becomes so jealous of the beauty of his own portrait that he makes a risky gamble: To let his portrait bear the burden of his aging and sins, so that he can stay in a young body forever.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, an Oscar Wilde novel now set as a Broadway play, is an ambitious example of what happens when you take an actor with superhuman capabilities (see: Sarah Snook) and then you supercharge her with state-of-the-art technology in the way of video projections.
While Snook is the only performer, she plays every single character (26 in all) without a break throughout the entirety of this one-act show. (You might say it's fractional work at its best. On stage. With camera angles and selfie shots so close up that there's literally, nowhere to hide.)
The show is an ambitious technological feat that elegantly fuses the cautionary tale of obsessive narcissism and pleasure with modern-day cinematic elements. Snook is followed around the stage with five camera operators who simultaneously broadcast their live feeds from different angles of her performance, or other characters. It's giving, "Andy Warhol meant modern-day memes."
There are times when Snook live broadcasts selfies of herself, altering in real time snapchat filters or her own face on a massive oversized video monitor, all while effortlessly delivering a pulsing monologue. Ultimately, the character Dorian Gray is forced to reckon with the reality that all of that hectic, self-obsessive behavior is doing more harm than good, and even though his face still carries youthful trust, his choices wreak havoc on everyone around him.
It begs the question:
How much is too much? At what point have you gone too far?
A Cautionary Tale
As an audience member, I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into my seat throughout the show, reflecting on the very nature of the mass-market selfie culture that's even more remixable now than ever before.
That, bolstered by technology, a single character can play every role in a complex play, is not unlike the confusing neo-egoism of founders in today's AI-supercharged tech sector. If you, too, can play all of the roles, who else do you need, really?
After all, if you can take any photo of yourself...
And remix and remix it and remix it and remix it...
If you can invent a character trained on your personality quirks and anxieties...
And then give them a voice to literally talk back to you...
If you can take someone else's copyrighted brand essence...
But then co-opt it with AI for your own personal benefit...
Even when you know it's wrong.
Not into this one bit. Protect artists.
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Even when you know the artist himself doesn't want it.
Will you stop?
Or will you do it anyway?
In a way, today, we are all Dorian Gray.
We are living with our portraits on the wall. Infinitely malleable. Infinitely fantastical. Infinitely surreal.
We can be whomever we want to be. We can stay young online forever. We can choose when to show different sides, different angles, different faces at any turn.
We can reach new audiences, seek out new perspectives, always with a shield of defense. Whether it's a screen, an anonymous avatar, a social media profile, or an infinitely remixable AI likeness.
But in the end, it's worth asking:
Is it really worth it?
How much is too much?
How do you know when you've gone too far?
The point of theatre and literature and all of the arts in general is to make us think about these things.
So if you're wondering about any of these things today too, I strongly suggest you go see the play on Broadway. It's a Wilde ride...
Seeing The Picture of Dorian Gray on Broadway during the same week a the rise and fall of Studio Ghibli memes on ChatGPT broke something in my brain a bit Read about the rise, the fall, and the existential questions of infinite, AI-enabled remixes https://hardmodefirst.xyz/the-clear-and-present-danger-of-dorian-gray
Discover how @bethanymarz explores the themes of obsessive narcissism in the Broadway adaptation of *The Picture of Dorian Gray*. With a stunning solo performance by Sarah Snook, intersection of technology and storytelling prompts reflection on the impact of modern-day self-obsession.