Heart Theatre AI Policy

Heart Theatre works with artists, educators, musicians, writers, filmmakers, students, audiences, and cultural partners from across the globe. We use technology when it helps people make stronger work, reach more people, and protect the time and attention that our work requires. We don’t use technology because it’s cool, and we don’t treat artificial intelligence as a replacement for the people who give the work its meaning. We need humans!

AI is already part of the creative world. It can help with research, early drafts, translation support, captions, planning, grant materials, scheduling, and communication. It can also make work feel anonymous when people use it carelessly. It can copy artists, expose private material, invent facts, flatten language, and make a sentence look finished without any human input. Heart Theatre’s position is clear: AI may assist the work, but people will always lead the work.

Theatre comes from our souls. It depends on our physical presence, our voices, the rehearsal room, the audience, and the trust that forms when people share time together. AI can support some of the preparation around that experience, but it cannot replace the experience itself. Heart Theatre will not use AI to replace actors, writers, directors, teachers, musicians, designers, students, or community participants.

We may use AI to move through practical work more efficiently, but a person must make the final decision. A person decides whether the language sounds true, whether a translation carries the right meaning, whether the material respects the story, and whether the work should carry Heart Theatre’s name. AI can help organize a draft or compare ideas, but it cannot take responsibility for anything we publish, teach, rehearse, perform, fundraise with, or share in public.

Heart Theatre will not present AI-generated material as original human work. We will not use AI to imitate a living artist’s voice, face, writing, performance, or style without permission. If AI plays a meaningful role in something public, we will be honest about that in plain language. We do not need to label every internal use of AI, but we will not hide it when technology shapes something an audience, student, funder, or partner experiences.

We respect artists and creative labor. Heart Theatre will not put private scripts, rehearsal notes, voice recordings, images, music, unfinished writing, or performance material into AI tools without permission from the people connected to that material. We also will not use AI as a cheap way around work that should be done by a paid artist. New tools can support the creative process, but they should not erase the skill, training, and imagination that artists bring to the room.

We will protect the people who share their stories with us. Theatre often depends on trust, especially in education and community-based work. A student may write something personal in a workshop. A community member may speak about family, loss, illness, or fear. A partner, donor, artist, or colleague may send private information. Heart Theatre will not put that material into AI tools unless we have permission and know the tool can protect it.

AI can help make some materials easier to access. It can support captions, summaries, plain-language drafts, and early translations. Those uses can help more people find our work. Final public language, especially in Spanish or any other language, should be reviewed by someone who understands the language and the culture behind it. A machine can compare words. A person knows when the sentence carries the right feeling.

We will check AI-assisted work before we use it publicly. AI can sound confident and still be wrong. It can miss certain facts, history, humor, pain, context, and cultural meaning. No public material should go out under Heart Theatre’s name unless a person has reviewed it for accuracy, privacy, fairness, and artistic value.

Heart Theatre will also share what we learn. Many artists, teachers, small theatres, cultural organizations, and community partners are trying to understand AI without losing the human part of their work. We are learning that in real time too. When we find a useful practice, a mistake worth avoiding, or a better way to protect artists and participants, we will share it through workshops, public conversations, written guides, and the projects we build with others.

We believe theatre people have something important to offer the AI conversation. We understand rehearsal rooms. We understand trust, voice, consent, timing, authorship, and what happens when a choice lands in front of an audience. Those instincts matter now more than ever. Heart Theatre will help artists and partners use new tools with confidence while keeping people at the center of the work.

Heart Theatre will keep using new tools, because artists have always worked with the tools of their time. The question is not whether technology belongs near art. The question is whether it serves the work or weakens it. We will use AI when it helps us prepare with more care, communicate more clearly, or make the work easier for people to access. We will leave it out when it copies an artist, risks someone’s privacy, flattens the language, or removes the human decision that theatre requires.

AI is a tool. Heart Theatre remains responsible for how we use it.