If theres one thing we know for certain about AI, its that it is artificial. Its in the name its made by humans to imitate human intelligence. Theres nothing about AI thats real, except perhaps for its capacity to do things faster than humans. And that makes me sad. The thing I love about the things I love doing is the doing the time taken to write a story, watch a movie, read a book. The pleasure is in the experience of it. Sometimes the tasks are hard, can require us to stretch our brains, but isnt the slog part of the joy of life?
Hard work may sound like the opposite of joy, but its in the effort taken to get things done, the time taken to think things through and the energetic force required to use our imaginations to come up with new ideas and novel solutions that the rewards for being human are to be found.
In this issue we catch up with Lee-Ann van Rooi, someone who works hard to tell stories as an actress and as a theatre maker. Shes widely known in South Africa because of her TV roles, but her heart is in live performance because, she says, theatre is where real connections are made, where we sit together as a community and experience a human ritual that has been practiced since the earliest days of humanity when we spent time around the re sharing stories, dancing into a trance state, transcending the physical world to connect with something greater than ourselves. On page 4, you can find out what drives this dynamic artist, and why shes determined to make theatre that challenges and stretches us in ways that AI and television cannot.
