Two-time Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz, far left, who plays opposition newspaper editor Kostya, joins other "Vladimir" cast members in a discussion after the show. Butz talked about how the forthcoming presidential election has divided his family.

A poster for a new play, “McNeal,” by Columbia County resident Ayad Akhtar, starring Robert Downey Jr. in his Broadway debut at Lincoln Center.

The set for "McNeal," a rumination on the use of artificial intelligence in the creative human process of novel writing, offers a dizzying array of special effects and whirling text displays resembling a smartphone gone awry.

Audience members enter Manhattan’s City Center on Oct. 19 for a Manhattan Theatre Club production of “Vladimir,” a new play by Erika Sheffer.

The set for "Vladimir" includes a Russian state-run TV set and an apartment for an investigative journalist loosely based on Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated in Moscow in 2006 for her coverage of corruption in the Putin regime.

The cast of “McNeal” takes a bow at the curtain call. Robert Downey Jr. is at center in a maroon sweater. His tour de force performance earned a standing ovation.

NEW YORK — Two new plays that I saw over the weekend in Manhattan made me think deeply about the elusive place of truth in contemporary politics and AI-generated literature — and the cautionary tales the shows embodied.

“McNeal,” a new play by Ayad Akhtar, who lives in Columbia County, probes the role of artificial intelligence in the creative human process of writing a novel. “McNeal” stars Robert Downey Jr. in his Broadway debut at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center.

Akhtar, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist — and former State Author (2021-2023) under the auspices of the New York State Writers Institute — pushed the boundaries of his craft by experimenting with large language model programs ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to write portions of “McNeal.”

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“It’s a play about AI,” Akhtar said in an interview in The Atlantic. “It stands to reason that I was able, over the........

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