On Broadway, A.I. and High-Tech Storytelling Is Having a Moment

Sarah Snook screen-sharing selfies from a face-filtering phone app. Nicole Scherzinger getting her close-up via movie cameras. George Clooney making onstage television. Robert Downey Jr. superseded by a digital puppet.

High-tech storytelling is surging on Broadway. Over the last year, stages have been brimming with large-scale and high-resolution videos, deployed not simply for scenery but also as an integrated narrative tool. It is all made possible by the growing availability, affordability and stability of the cameras, computers, projectors and surfaces that are utilized as part of today’s stage sets.

The phenomenon, which is presumably here to stay, also reflects the ubiquity of digital devices in contemporary life. In an era when we are rarely separated from our smartphones or smartwatches, and video greets us in our cars and supermarkets, the latest technology is transforming stagecraft and storytelling.

“The majority of Americans’ waking, conscious moments are looking at screens,” said the designer Jake Barton, who last fall worked on “McNeal,” a play that starred Downey as a novelist whose entanglement with generative artificial intelligence is woven into the scenic design. “On one level,” Barton said, “this is just theater naturally evolving.”

Just two weeks ago, the Tony Awards gave the coveted best musical prize to “Maybe Happy Ending,” in which actors playing robots share a stage at times with massive videos depicting their digital memories. The best musical revival Tony went to “Sunset Boulevard,” where performers holding camera rigs film part of the action for transmission to a giant screen that swivels into the audience’s view. And the best play revival honor went to “Eureka Day,” which featured a reliably gut-busting scene in which chat comments posted during a school board meeting were projected above the cast.