AI is on Barry Cavin’s mind. He’s co-founder of Ghostbird Theatre Company, which recently received a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. With the money, Cavin is co-writing a play with an AI collective that confronts the perplexing choices that visual and performing artists encounter as human-created works of art and performance are being replaced by non-human systems.
Ghostbird will perform the piece, titled “The Residue,” at the Alliance for the Arts on Dec. 11 and 12. Both performances will be at 7:30 p.m.
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Ghostbird Theatre Company is the only theatre company in the American South fully dedicated to presenting place-specific stories and conceptual events. It designs its plays in concert with its host venue — its history, its aesthetics, and its mission. Ghostbird’s shows are intimate, sometimes immersive, and always very different from what theatregoers find at other community theaters in Southwest Florida.
“We are excited to receive this critical funding for a project that will help us create a conversation within our community about our concerns for human creativity in the face of a radically different way making art,” said Cavin.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support opportunities across the country for Americans to experience and participate in the arts,” said Mary Anne Carter, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “As we celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary this year, it is a moment to recognize the important role the arts continue to play in our lives, communities, and heritage.”
Said Cavin, “’The Residue’ will address the collective fear and compelling awe we share as we stand at a new technological threshold and witness the potential emergence of what Carl Bosch described over a century ago as ‘…a grim enemy for reasons we do not yet comprehend.’”
About Barry Cavin
Cavin’s playwriting credits include “Writing Shadows,” a multi-tiered offering that centered around a St. Louis housewife by the name of Pearl Curran who began channeling a woman who lived in the 1600s after dabbling with a Ouija board one afternoon in 1913. Cavin developed it for the Langford-Kingston Home. He also conceived of “No. 27,” which he co-wrote with Ghostbird co-founder and actor Katelyn Gravel, “The Perfect Island of Dr. Teed," a story about self-proclaimed messiah Cyrus Teed and his followers, the Koreshans, that examined the convergence of religion, pseudo-science and utopian society, and “ORBS!” in which Teed imagines a clean new Utopia, one to replace the New Jerusalem that he and his followers built in Estero between 1894 and 1908.
Over the course of his career, Cavin has designed and directed more than 40 fully-produced plays. More than a dozen of these have been staged at FGCU, where he serves as a professor of theatre. FGCU TheatreLab audiences will recall “The Mansion at Hangman’s Bog,” “Wooden Mouth” and “The Living Blog: Apocalypse.”
From the chair, Barry’s directing credits extend to a full spectrum of classic and contemporary plays, including “The Tempest,” “Agamemnon,” “Beyond Therapy,” “Exit the King,” “No Exit,” “Psychosis 4.48,” “Three Sisters” and “Woyzeck.” He also directs student work. “Paler Than Grass” and “Orphan Bunko” are two of these.
In both his capacity as a theatre professor and as a playwright, Cavin seeks to build an interest in theatre.
“I like to think of myself as an artist who uses theatre as a medium,” says Cavin. “I draw upon my training as a director, my experience as a designer, and my passion as an actor to render works for the stage that are unique in vision but effectively serve the story passed on by the playwright. Most importantly, I appreciate the role of the audience as co-creators in our temporal magic. Without the audience, my work in the theatre is pointless. I embrace Artaud’s challenge: ‘We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.’ Horace too guides my understanding of the purpose of theatre. He believed that the audience should be treated to profit and to delight. That is the simple aim of every theatre work I create.”
About the National Endowment for the Arts
Established by Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that is the largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide and a catalyst of public and private support for the arts. By advancing opportunities for arts participation and practice, the NEA fosters and sustains an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States. To learn more, visit arts.gov.
More on Ghostbird Theatre Company
Ghostbird Theatre Company's mission is to engage, inspire, and educate the community by producing site-inspired and immersive works that challenge audiences to re-examine the human condition from a fresh perspective.
It postulates three governing principles:
- to develop new and experimental works and honor old works that have inspired people to be bold, compassionate and imaginative;
- to support and nurture an ensemble of theatre artists who are devoted to new ideas of what theatre can be; and
- to sustain our community through educational and creative engagement.
The company’s namesake is the ivory-billed woodpecker, a cypress swamp native thought to be extinct. Some say it still swoops down from mossy branches on occasion and old-timers swear they can hear it knocking. And it's the mystery, the elusiveness, and the legend of this totemic bird that inspires Ghostbird.
In this regard, Ghostbird keeps its runs short and locations illusive. Not everything is as it seems.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
