From The Chicago Reader, Friday, October 21, 1994.
Daniel Goldstein loves rules. As an undergraduate at the University
of Wisconsin he studied artificial intelligence, the branch of
computer science that imbues machines with the rules of thought. As a
graduate student in psychology at the University of Chicago, Goldstein
works on computer models of cognition, studying the rule sets that
govern how people perceive the physical world.
But in his off hours Goldstein is an improv actor. On its face this
might seem like a contradiction. Surely improv doesn't suit the
temperament of a binary guy like Goldstein. In improv, you're supposed
to push the limits, break the rules, go a little nuts. But Goldstein
likes to perform, and in Hyde Park any performer worth his salt
improvises. What to do?
Design a computer program to generate rules for improvisation, of
course. And base it on the dumbed-down world of TV sitcoms.
Goldstein's idea was born in a computer lab course called Practicum
in Artificial Intelligence, taught by Kristian Hammond, who along with
being a world-class computer scientist is the handsome but usually
troubled lead in Cast on a Hot Tin Roof, the improvised spoofs of
Tennessee Williams plays performed by the Free Associates every
weekend at the Bop Shop. When Hammond charged his students with coming
up with programs that would have "cocktail-party appeal," one student
designed a system to help people select movies according to their
tastes. Another wired a computer to a VCR to monitor how people played
the Nintendo game Street Warrior and offer suggestions for better
play. And Goldstein conjured up something called "Structuralist
Gilligan."
"It used structuralist principles," he explains with academic
seriousness, "to find plot resolutions to episodes of Gilligan's
Island." The concept was that sitcoms, like languages and computer
programs, have a grammar, or basic framework, on which all new
iterations of the form are built. "First there's an initiating event,
like news that the island is sinking or someone is arriving
unexpectedly," says Goldstein. "Then there are the conflicts, how
different people respond. Third, there are the actions, how the
conflicts play out, and finally the resolution that restores
everything to the way it was before the show started." Goldstein fed a
computer the plot elements from many sitcoms and had it to analyze them
for common structural elements. Then he designed a program that could
apply that structure to any set of circumstances. Artificial
intelligence meets artificial stupidity.
Goldstein's program soon went from lab to stage. On a car trip down
to Memphis, he and fellow improviser John Bourdeaux got to talking
about the program, and Bourdeaux suggested they form a troupe and try
it live. Back in Chicago they assembled a group of actors, drilling
them in the grammar of the sitcom and in how to stay within the form's
half-hour time constraint.
The troupe--named Sitcom, appropriately--doesn't re-create or spoof
specific shows; rather, it follows the same rules as Goldstein's
computer program, applying the look and feel of a television comedy to
characters and situations created on the spot. Using a collection of
56 cubes, the actors construct sets as they go, creating tables,
loveseats, and kitchens on demand. Two musicians spin jaunty new theme
music to punctuate the action. The performance I saw involved a pair
ot twins who had inherited an Eastern European spy headquarters and
hoped to turn it into a cabbage restaurant. The first act was a
"pilot" episode; the second act presented another episode with the
same characters, concerning the wacky consequences when one of the
twins confused a recipe for a bomb with a recipe for a pie. The
characters and improvising were strong and intelligent--in an
appropriately dumb kind of way. But the most enjoyable part came in
learning just how much we know about sitcoms, how absolutely
predictable they are, and how they hook us nonetheless.
Goldstein eventually hopes to move the show to a permanent
north-side venue, and he has dreams of applying his program to bigger
fish. "I hope we can eventually start a mill for cranking out sitcoms
plots to sell to Hollywood. We generate an enormous number of plots,
and all we have to do afterward is type them up." Now there's a way to
fill up those 500 TV channels we've been promised.
Sitcom performs Thursday through Saturday, October 20 through 22,
at 8 PM in the first-floor theater of the Univeristy of Chicago's
Reynolds Club, 5706 S. University. Tickets are $6. Call 702-7300 for
info.
Copyright, Ted C. Fishman