Der Fall McNeal

In the organizer's words:

Jacob McNeal looks back on his life: every single one of his novels was a bestseller - if you didn't know him, you knew his books. It was a successful life. Back when his wife, who would have loved to be like him, was still alive. But genius is genius, McNeal thinks, and the good times are long gone. The writer still dreams of winning the Nobel Prize, but he is ill, lonely and without ideas. Outside, artificial intelligence has changed the world, and how tempting the thought seems: the diaries of the deceased woman, her story, which is his story - the perfect novel, secretly generated by a chatbot, published by Jacob McNeal. And suddenly it's back, the long-awaited success. But at what price?

With "The McNeal Case", US playwright Ayad Akhtar draws an abysmal psychogram of a type of artist aware of his own finiteness against the backdrop of the question of how ChatGPT is changing our understanding of art. The play celebrated its world premiere on Broadway in New York in 2024, was recently shown at the Burgtheater in Vienna and is now receiving its German premiere in Düsseldorf with Thiemo Schwarz in the title role. The director is Philipp Rosendahl, who recently staged "Liv Strömquist's Astrology" and Suzie Miller's courtroom drama "Prima Facie" at the D'haus.