Are you at your most intelligent when looking at yourself in the mirror? Never mind chimpanzees and crows, how self-aware is the human animal?
The mirror test is a technique developed in 1970 to measure cognitive self-awareness – intelligence, no less – in animals.
Come and join CPT as we conjure with artificial – and other – minds, the legal rights of elephants, and octopuses (octopi?) with consciousness to spare. In song, sketch and story, this work-in-progress asks who gets to define intelligence, why AI has to be so scary, and whether our fellow beasts might save us from ourselves.
CPT's recent in-house productions include Human Jam (2019), when we joined with local residents to dramatise the impact of the HS2 development on the west Euston neighbourhood; and Fog Everywhere (2017), which addressed the impact of London air pollution on the young in collaboration with a group of Camden teenagers.
Devised and performed by: Peyvand Sadeghian, Shamira Turner, Tom Adams
Directed by: Brian Logan
Music by: Tom Adams
The Mirror Test is a Camden People's Theatre production, supported by The London Community Foundation and Cockayne - Grants for the Arts.
"It is precisely these types of projects, involving these types of people, in these types of theatres that make London what it is."
The Lancet
