Arizona Theatre Explains AI Use in World Premiere Musical. That Doesn’t Make It Better.

by Chris Peterson

Fountain Hills Theater’s world premiere musical Shrew! opened this month in Arizona after earlier reporting that the country-western Taming of the Shrew adaptation uses AI-generated accompaniment.

A program note from Peter J. Hill, who wrote the script, score, and lyrics, now gives a clearer picture of what happened.

Hill says he composed the melodies, wrote the lyrics, and set the show’s musical style, while artificial intelligence helped expand those ideas into “fully realized instrumental orchestrations.” Music Director Michelle Lavin then wrote the arrangements. Hill describes the AI as a “collaborator rather than a creator” and asks uneasy artists to listen before judging.

Fine. The clarification is useful. It is also not nearly the defense Hill and Fountain Hills Theater seem to think it is.

Nobody was asking whether Hill typed “make me a musical” into a chatbot and walked away. The concern was always more specific and more serious: a theatre chose to mount a world premiere musical where the instrumental accompaniment was generated with AI assistance.

In a form built on human collaboration and live musicianship, that choice deserves more than a reassuring program note and a pat on the head.

Accompaniment is traditionally done by musicians, orchestrators, arrangers, accompanists, and music directors. You know, artists. The people theatres keep telling us they value right up until software offers a cheaper shortcut.

 Theatres should stop acting shocked when people object to technology being slipped into the same spaces where human artists are already being asked to do too much for too little. The endgame of AI should be to free up time to create more art, not less. 

So yes, Fountain Hills Theatre, the clarification helps. It’s, of course, too late to change course at this time, but what I really wanted to see in the statement is more reflection about whether they would do this again, and the lack of admission that this is even an issue should be the biggest warning of all to the Arizona theatre community.