Quantum Theater: Extending Realities for Post-AI Liveness
Robert Twomey, Ash Eliza Smith, Reid Brockmeier, Sam Bendix · 2025
Quantum Theater takes quantum phenomena and re-imagines them as playable theater using generative AI to expand narrative possibilities in real-time.Working with archival materials and recent literature, it engages quantum science both as a subject and a means for creating playable experience, exploring the history and current development of the field.Phenomena like entanglement, superposition, coherence, and collapse are used as models for experiential and narrative effects manifest in theatrical performance.Through XR techniques multiple realities are layered on stage, branching and collapsing as the action develops over the course of the performance.Functional quantum modules shape this narrative logic in a post-AI exploration of liveness, variability, and improvisation.Quantum Theater explores simultaneous narratives in a space of competing realities, casting the audience as observer-participants actively cohering a story through their choices.