“We have to be weird and random and non-linear:” Joe Ward Munrow on Creativity, AI, and the Revolutionary Potential of Community

 Munrow’s latest play centres around the mythological leader of the Luddite revolution, but its themes are painfully relevant to our digital age

Fifteen years of writing plays haven’t quite demystified the spell of a good story for Joe Ward Munrow. Whilst his impressive repertoire is a testament to his understanding of the mechanics of good drama, he remains enchanted by that elusive element that transcends technique and makes the arts so irresistible. “It’s magic!” he professes, picking up a copy of Rosa Guy’s The Friends to illustrate his point. “This writer is dead and they’re writing about Caribbean girls in Harlem. But at the same time, it’s speaking so deeply to my feelings and my relationship to class, and you think, that’s mad, it’s magic.” It’s this sense of wonder that keeps Joe’s imagination so fertile, an imagination that has enabled him to conjure up such an original premise for his latest work, The Legend of Ned Ludd.

Although the play’s themes often preoccupy contemporary playwrights - capitalism, globalisation, class, technology – Munrow addresses them in a unique way. There are twenty-one scenes altogether, but each night, a machine randomly selects between certain scenes. For each performance, both the audience and actors have no idea which scenes will be chosen and there are 256 potential versions. “You could see [the play] on Tuesday and someone else will go and see it on Wednesday and there might be bits where you’re on the same page and there might be bits where you’re not,” says Joe. He hopes this will add an element of excitement and spontaneity, including the potential for error. “It’s so tricksy that it could go wrong [which] I think will excite an audience because it’s not pre-recorded, almost like free will.” But it’s more than just a gimmick. The mechanised format reflects the wider theme of how digital technology alters our understanding of narrative. “It must be so difficult for children nowadays to form a unifying narrative because if they sit in front of YouTube, they’re all in their own algorithms - whatever medium a narrative is going through, not everyone is going to receive it.”

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“We have to be weird and random and non-linear:” Joe Ward Munrow on Creativity, AI, and the Revolutionary Potential of Community - Department of English - University of Liverpool