Artificial Intelligence for Dramatic Performance

In the last years, digital media have challenged traditional narrative models with an increasing request for interaction with the user, leading to novel paradigms of storytelling and performance. While most research in interactive storytelling and drama has addressed the role of automation in the story generation process, in this paper we present a framework that relies on Artificial Intelligence techniques to augment the performer-audience interaction in a storytelling setting. Step after step, the emotional response of the audience is automatically detected, the performer decides about her/his attitude towards the audience, and the story is composed and delivered to the audience by the joint systemperformer initiative on an augmented stage. Initially designed as training tool for interactive story editing, the system has been deployed to create a public performance in February 2019.