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Teaching Theatre in the Age of AI

Explore How AI and Technology are Revolutionizing Theatre Production and Education

  • Higher Education
  • Event
  • On-demand
  • Theater
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Theater Appreciation Introduction to Theater
  • 55 Minutes
  • On-Demand Video

Description

The omnipresence of new technologies and AI is impacting theatre and the study of theatre. Watch an engaging conversation on technology's affect in the theatre industry and also in our classrooms with Al Goldfarb and Megan Geigner, authors of Theatre: The Lively Art and The Theatre Experience.

What You'll Learn:

  • Technology and Theatre Production: Explore how AI and new media technology are influencing acting, directing, and design, including recent Broadway and West End productions using technology in new ways to enhance theatre.   
  • GenAI in Pedagogy: Understand how generative AI is affecting students’ approaches to learning and discover strategies to integrate AI into classroom activities while encouraging critical thinking and originality.

About Your Speaker

  • Alvin Goldfarb -

    Alvin Goldfarb

    Alvin Goldfarb is President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Western Illinois University. Dr. Goldfarb also served as Provost, Dean of Fine Arts, and Chair of the Department of Theatre at Illinois State University. He holds a PhD in Theatre from the City University of New York. 

    Dr. Goldfarb is the coauthor, with Megan Geigner and Edwin Wilson, of The Theatre Experience and Theatre: The Lively Art for McGraw Hill as well as Living Theatre for W. W. Norton and Company.  He coedited, with Rebecca Rovit, Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs, which was a National Jewish Book Award finalist.

    Currently, Dr. Goldfarb serves as the lead scholar for the online Holocaust Theatre Catalog, hosted at the University of Miami. He has also published numerous articles and reviews in scholarly journals and anthologies.

    Dr. Goldfarb served as a member of the Illinois Arts Council, the Illinois Alliance for Arts Education, the Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee, which recognizes excellence in the Chicago theatre, and the board of Chicago's Congo Square Theatre. He received service awards from the Illinois Theatre Association, as well as from the American College Theatre Festival. Dr. Goldfarb also received an Alumni Achievement Award from the CUNY Graduate Center’s Alumni Association and was inducted into the Hunter College Alumni Hall of Fame.

  • Megan Geigner -

    Megan Geigner

    Megan E. Geigner is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Cook Family Writing Program at Northwestern University. She is a theatre and performance historian and scholar with a particular interest in Chicago. Her publications include articles and chapters on the history of Chicago's relationship with: Black activism, the playwright August Wilson, the Little Theatre Movement, and Columbus Day, among others. She is the coeditor of Makeshift Chicago Stages and Theatre after Empire, and she is the coauthor of Theatre: The Lively Art, Theatre Experience, and Living Theatre textbooks.