A mind-bending, heart-rending – and funny – transmedial performance experience engaging questions of artificial intelligence, humanity, immigration, belonging, simulation, and consciousness, at the heart of which beats a charming love story: between Zina, an undocumented woman, and AI,  who exists on a large computer monitor. Over the course of 50 nights, Al and Zina swirl us through questions of consciousness, language, love, human behavior, the nature of existence, and whether two misfits can find fulfillment in this crazy, mixed-up world. As this intimate drama builds towards its climax, the characters become gradually subsumed in a projected rom-com film, where they meet at last IRL: In Real Life.

Written by Saviana Stanescu, with contributions from data scientist Dr. Niki Athanasiadou, and directed by Jeremy Goren, Zebra 2.0 was commissioned for the inaugural Science in Theatre Festival by Transforma Theatre in New York in 2021. Goren, Stanescu and Athanasiadou decided to continue to develop the project.The ICE FACTORY presentation at The New Ohio Theatre of this evolving work is co-produced by AnomalousCo, a predominantly queer/woman-led, feminist, transdisciplinary performance collective, Wistaria Project, and the Romanian Cultural Institute. 

New Ohio Theatre – a beacon for new performance in New York City – selected Zebra 2.0 to participate in ICE FACTORY 2023, the 30th annual – and final – edition of the Obie Award-winning summer festival of new performance work. The festival that TimeOut NY calls “[t]he coolest of the summer theatre festivals” features exciting downtown artists presenting their latest projects in an environment of generosity, dialogue, and inspiration. Plays introduced in Ice Factory have gone on to garner Drama Desk nominations, Obie Awards, Audience First Awards in Edinburgh, Off-Broadway productions, commercial runs, and national and international tours. 

Alina Mihailevschi recently joined the team as the new Zina;
Tim Craig will play Al - an A.I.

For the ICE FACTORY we’re expanding and evolving the audience experience on stage and off. Using state-of-the-art natural language processing algorithms, Dr. Athanasiadou has transformed and analyzed staged dialogue into data using language learning models that John Jannone is transforming into digital visualizations. Below is an example of Dr. Athanasiadou's analysis expressing the emotional flow of Stanescu's text.

Our partners at A.I./wildlife conservation non-profit Wild Me are providing imagery from their work and plan to join us for interactive presentations at the festival. We’re also discussing a website through which audiences can interact with the technology and attendant themes outside of the theatre. Zebra 2.0, with the involvement of Wild Me, has the potential to catalyze interesting social and intellectual cross-pollinations (science/tech/art/immigration) through the experience of a touching and funny rom-com. 

Your contribution will go towards covering the costs of the materials, equipment, and personnel to further bring the science of the performance to life and create a more impactful and stimulating audience experience in a way that honors the work of all involved. Our small production team is working to try to ensure we can develop these elements in exciting ways for ICE FACTORY that springboard the ongoing development of the project even after July, so we can keep engaging in the larger societal conversations around the human pursuit of artificial intelligence.