World of theater computes for playwright

A chatterbot is a computer program created to mimic an intelligent conversation. In his play, "Imposters," opening Sunday, Jan. 24, at the 21st Annual Rhinofest theater festival, playwright and actor Mark Chrisler uses chatterbots to explore the difference between computers and human beings.

In Chrisler's play, two characters, ELIZA and PARRY, named after two famous early chatterbot programs, question each other. To make the conversation more authentically chatterbot-like, Chrisler used transcripts in the play from his own conversations with online chatterbot programs.

"One of my questions is, 'Is the audience going to be able to tell which parts were written by a computer and which parts were written by me?'." Chrisler says.

Chrisler, who grew up in St. Charles and went to high school in the 1990s at what is now St. Charles East High School, loves writing plays that explore the limits of theater.

His love of theater goes back at least as far as high school, where he did acting and singing. He began writing when he was a theater student at Northern Illinois University.

"Another student at Northern pushed me to begin writing," Chrisler says. "But the real juncture came for me one year at Northern when I discovered I could take another class or I could intern with a real theater."

Eager to get out into the world, he applied for internships.

"I love the Chicago storefront theater scene," Chrisler says. "I think it is the best theater in the country."

Chrisler ended up interning with one of Chicago's more vital, creative and fringy theater companies, the Curious Theatre. For two decades now, the folks there have been creating interesting, provocative productions that test the limits of theater.

"I found my place," Chrisler says. "I thought, oh, I am going to stay here."

That was nearly 10 years ago, and he is still working with the company, writing short plays and acting.

Every year, Curious Theatre, working with the Prop Thtr and other theaters, stages Rhinofest. It's a festival of plays, monologues and other performances, many of them seemingly too "out there" even for Curious Theatre's main season.

Chrisler wrote "Imposters" specifically for Rhinofest. It began as a play about British philosopher Alan Turing. Turing is given credit for having thought through in the 1940s the philosophical foundations of modern computer science. He invented the "Turing Test," a method of telling when you are carrying on a conversation with a human being or some kind of artificial, computer-generated "intelligence."

Turing had a famously tortured life. A solitary genius who created code-breaking devices that helped defeat the Nazis, he was also gay at a time when, in Britain, that was a crime punishable with imprisonment or worse. He ended up becoming enmeshed in a scandal and running afoul of British authorities, events that ultimately ruined him.

How did Chrisler become interested in Turing? "I am just a weirdo with history and philosophy and literature," he says.

But, he didn't want to write simply a stage biography. So Chrisler put together a play that both discusses Turing's life and his ideas, specifically whether a computer will ever be able to replace the human brain.

"In my play I have two men in a room involved in an interrogation," Chrisler says. "They could be Turing and a questioner from the government. Or it could be two machines (chatterbots) talking to each other."

It's not a very conventional idea for a play, but it is an interesting one.

"I think it is more of a meditation than a play," Chrisler says. "But I am very happy with it. I am happier with it than with anything I have done before. Turing was a very important person. Awareness of this is growing in the culture. Some argue that he helped invent computers. His story is fascinating, and harrowing."

• "Imposters" runs Sundays, Jan. 24 to Feb. 14, at Rhinofest, located at the Prop Thtr, 3502 North Elston Ave., Chicago. For tickets call (773) 508-0666 or visit www.rhinofest.com.