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Theatre director Max Gillies discusses his concerns about artificial intelligence, particularly its potential to weaken human thinking and replace creative work. He explores these ideas in a new adaptation of Molière's Tartuffe at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre, where the production features an AI robot character and reflects on humanity's relationship with machines. Malthouse's 2027 season showcases eight all-Australian plays, including several world premieres, as the company seeks to introduce fresh theatrical experiences while confronting the impact of rapidly advancing technology.
"We have a rule in our house that no one talks to the machines," he says. He sees the technology as outsourcing thinking and cognition, which he reckons is particularly harmful to young people.
"I really hate it because I think it's coming for everything. " It's something Perfect has been thinking about a lot as he works on his latest show, a new adaptation of 17th-century French playwright Molière's Tartuffe for Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre. The original play, otherwise known as The Impostor, or The Hypocrite, is a satire about a charlatan, posing as a religious man, Tartuffe, who manipulates his way into foolish Orgon's home and family.
"I can't write anything but what I know, so what's been really fun is to meet Tartuffe where I am in my life," he says. "And I love a good sci-fi. I love synthetic humans and the idea of robots and machines and our relationship with them into the future.
Perfect's The Tartuffe, in which he will also star as Orgon, is one of eight plays in Malthouse's 2027 season, the first from artistic director Dean Bryant The Tartuffe reunites Perfect with his Beetlejuice co-star Karis Oka. They're joined by award-winning comedian Noah Szto as the AI robot. The season is notable for being all-Australian, with seven plays making their world premiere, including an adaptation of Charlotte Wood's"We want to have new experiences," Bryant says.
"We want to see things we haven't seen on stage before. "While it's thrilling for Bryant to have a season made up of new Australian work, it also feels scary. Perfect is impressed by the ways AI can be used in areas like translation and learning new skills but is frustrated by how it came about — being trained for free on human creativity — and that it is now being deployed to replace that creative process.
"The game of creativity is who can sit in the discomfort of not knowing what to do the longest," he says. "If you know there's AI there that can give you an answer, any answer, to stop the discomfort of not having anything on the page, then I think you've lost the game.
For Bryant, there's also something interesting about taking a story about a family trying and failing to connect with each other through technology and putting that into a theatre, a space that can't be replicated by AI.
"It's such a beautiful kind of metaphor to go, you've all come here to have the human experience of this, and we're telling you a cautionary tale about where not to find connection. " While The Tartuffe may have a serious message, Perfect stresses it's a "front-footed black comedy", which might entice new audiences to the theatre.
"I know that I and people like Dean are always looking for new ways to connect with new audiences and to engender a greater sense of ownership or belonging from people for theatre," he says. "It's a place of welcome where you should be able to go and see an Australian take on a classic or a new Australian story and have a conversation about what it is to be Australian and alive right now.
"Bryant says the appeal of adaptation is about more than familiarity. "Our job is to then explode that. "on Stone Yard Devotional to help create the visual world of the novel, which follows a woman who leaves her home and marriage in the city to live in an enclosed religious community on the Monaro plains in regional NSW. It will star Lisa McCune as the unnamed protagonist, alongside Catherine McClements as a celebrity nun who visits the community.
"There's so much about atmosphere and the plains and the way the nunnery feels ," Bryant explains. " wants it to feel like crosses over with art installation, and for the sound design to be as immersive and important in the dramaturgy as the text … That will give the kind of transcendent feeling of the book.
" Bryant emphasises Narkle will be doing more than playing all the characters in the Victorian gothic novel about a governess looking after two children in a country house. "It's a really big ask to be a solo performer taking us into a world where there may or not be ghosts. ""It's the ultimate challenge for an actor to be given a one-person show," he says.
The collaboration with Bloomshed is part of Malthouse's commitment to developing the local theatre sector.
"We scour the independent scene for makers that have developed a unique voice, and we are actively putting at least one of those companies in our seasons each year," Bryant says. " to either elevate a piece they've put on in an independent venue and scale it up for the main stage, or to build with them a new piece for the main stage.
", which took aim at the housing crisis and replaced Mr Bennet with a pot plant, to Malthouse, after it premiered in 2025 as part of Darebin Arts Speakeasy. Next year, Malthouse will be helping the collective to create from scratch its version of Gone with the Wind, which will look at the relationship between resource ownership and power.
Bloomshed devise shows like Gone with the Wind as a collective, working together intensely for two weeks before stepping away for months.
"Melbourne has always had a really interesting independent scene, and they fizzle out if they don't get more of a spotlight on them," Bryant says. "It's our job to give them that lens. "Instead, it's about building capacity within the sector. "By moving into a company that's set up to create this kind of work, they upskill really quickly," Bryant explains.
Blake's play Jackpot is about intergenerational inequality, while Weatherall's play Lucy is an intimate relationship drama.
"They both think very deeply about where we find ourselves and yet write from the age they actually are," Bryant says.
Artificial Intelligence Theatre Creativity Tartuffe Malthouse Theatre
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