Fringe marketing copy loves to promise “something you have never experienced before.” Most of the time that means you will get another monologue about someone’s bad break up or a quirky sketch with a ukulele. But AI: The Waiting Room genuinely delivers something unique, a personalised theatrical encounter where the story is built for you, in real time, by an AI.
I did not do it in the show’s advertised venue at C Arts. Instead, I was set up at theSpace by the two co-creators themselves, who very kindly let me take part using my own phone. It is not a performance in the usual sense. You start by answering a handful of questions, some of them surprisingly personal. My advice, be honest. You will get more out of it if you drop the polite small talk and actually reveal something about yourself.
The AI takes your answers and instantly spins a story designed just for you. In my case, it was a strange, atmospheric journey with flashes of the absurd, the poignant, and the oddly specific, the kind of specificity that makes you wonder how your answers have been reassembled under the hood. The result feels intimate, even if there is no live actor speaking to you.
One lovely element I did not get to experience fully, but saw in action, is the post it note exchange. In the main setup, each participant writes down key ideas, feelings, or priorities on sticky notes and puts them into shared boxes. Afterwards, you can browse everyone else’s notes. It is an unexpectedly human moment, seeing what matters to you laid alongside what matters to others, and noticing the overlaps and differences. Part of the experiment here seems to be in gathering those real human data points, feeding them back into the AI engine, and exploring what truly makes people tick.
The piece hints at more social interaction than I could experience in my solo trial. In the full room version, you might be prompted to approach other participants, swap notes, take selfies, and compare stories, or even dance together. This gives it a curious speed dating vibe, minus the pressure to actually date anyone, where emotional openness and curiosity are the currency.
The potential for expansion is clear. The team talk about incorporating VR glasses to add a richer visual dimension, and you can see how that could layer new ways for participants to connect. But even in its current form, there is an intriguing playfulness in how it mixes theatre, game design, and social experiment.
Is it perfect? Not yet. The narrative generated by the AI can feel uneven, and whether it “lands” depends partly on your own willingness to engage. It is an experience that lives or dies on audience buy in, the more you put in, the more you get out. But that is also its charm. It is not theatre to be consumed passively, it is theatre to be entered into, shaped by your own presence. In my own experiment with the piece, I was left with a tantalising question, what would you take with you if the whole world was destroyed? What is the one object that matters most to you? You cannot choose a person; it has to be an object. For many, that will be a difficult question to answer. In a world where your phone is suddenly just a lump of dead metal, what is the next thing on your list? It is an unexpectedly profound thing to leave an audience pondering, and it lingers long after the headphones come off
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 15th August 2025
North West End UK Rating:
Running time – 40mins