I sat my mother down two days before the appointment. I told her my brother would pick me up in the morning and take me to the hospital, that I would be at his apartment, and that I had pursued this on my own because I knew she wouldn\u2019t be supportive. I didn\u2019t want her to try and stop me.<\/p>\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/DA_QueerAI-MacKenzie-10.jpg\")
Sarah Dugan, left, and Audrey Wells, rehearse a scene from the upcoming play “AURA” at KST’s Alloy Studios on Sept. 25, in Friendship. Dugan plays the role of the AI chatbot. (Photo by Danny Arensberg\/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)<\/p>\n
Of course she still did. That was the first time I\u2019d seen my mother cry about my transition since I had given her a book about trans teens for Christmas and she told me I\u2019d ruined the holidays.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She begged me to reconsider. She told me how much it hurt that I had kept this process a secret from her. She suggested I\u2019d regret my long-considered choice. And she told me:<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I am mourning my child.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I gave up. Hearing those words from her mouth, something I thought parents only said on TV, was when I realized there was no rhetorical argument I could make for why she should support me. This was not an issue of rationality. It was emotional.<\/p>\n
My instinct was to judge those feelings. There is a cliche within the trans community that \u201cmy parent told me they feel like I\u2019m dead,\u201d and while I still hold that isn\u2019t the healthiest response, I also wanted to understand why so many people with trans loved ones express a similar sense of loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Making space for ambiguous grief<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a theatremaker by trade, so I wrote a play about it. I started writing \u201cAURA\u201d while trying to figure out why parents of trans children experience such acute grief around their child\u2019s transition. Generally I am fascinated by grief. My first play \u201cBone Play\u201d was all about death and mourning, and my next play \u201cRoadkill Bambi\u201d was about grieving one\u2019s imagined future in the face of impending radical change \u2014 but \u201cAURA\u201d is perhaps my most personal investigation of the subject.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think theatre that makes good therapy makes good art, and I don\u2019t think theatre that makes good art makes good therapy.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/DA_QueerAI-MacKenzie-11.jpg\")
Props on set during a rehearsal of “AURA” at KST’s Alloy Studios on Sept. 25, in Friendship. (Photo by Danny Arensberg\/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)<\/p>\n
Which is why \u201cAURA\u201d is not about my mother, who went on to spend several years working through her complicated emotions so that we could continue to have a mutually respectful and loving (though not always perfect) parent-child relationship. That wasn\u2019t an easy task for her. There aren\u2019t many spaces where one can safely express the sense of loss that comes with the transition of a loved one. It\u2019s common enough, though, that a simple Google search reveals countless articles guiding people through this “ambiguous grief.\u201d Alongside these articles, Reddit threads by parents asking for help are dismissed with, \u201cyour child is alive, be grateful\u201d rather than exploring what has actually been lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clearly there is a salient experience parents are having, and a sense of complex loss that accompanies it. Probably the ideal place to discuss those feelings would be in the privacy of a therapeutic relationship.<\/p>\n
You know what really doesn\u2019t make good therapy? AI.<\/p>\n
If my mother\u2019s emotional reaction to my transition was what stood in the way of her support, then what would happen if a woman in a similar position turned to an AI company to help her work through these complex feelings of grief?<\/p>\n
That is what happens in \u201cAURA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shannon, a single mother, is struggling to catch up with the changes she sees in her son Dustin as he transitions from female to male. Her solution is to create a secret AI griefbot modeled on Dustin, one that feeds on data she provides to simulate a version of him that never transitioned at all.<\/p>\n
In a world where we are increasingly outsourcing our emotional processing<\/a>, our healthcare<\/a> and even our grief<\/a> onto AI agents, the story of \u201cAURA\u201d isn\u2019t a hypothetical \u2013 it\u2019s a reality.<\/p>\n This is an issue larger than just artificial intelligence. It\u2019s worsened by our broken healthcare system, and by our broader reliance on technology for social connection.\u00a0<\/p>\n The context lost by AI \u2018forgeries\u2019<\/p>\n In \u201cThe work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,\u201d Walter Benjamin writes about what sets the Mona Lisa apart from a perfect forgery or mass produced print. To Benjamin, it is a sense of authenticity which comes from the object\u2019s context, its position in space and time, and all the \u201cexperiences\u201d it has had. He calls this the work\u2019s \u201caura.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Benjamin was writing in 1935, as\u00a0 photography and film began to supersede traditional art forms. It is not a coincidence that the title of my play, and the name of the fictional AI company, is \u201cAURA\u201d. I am curious how \u201cThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction\u201d might be applied to AI, to an attempt to create a “forgery” or a \u201creplica\u201d of an individual, and what context could be lost in the process.<\/p>\n Human beings cannot be boiled down to points of data. The belief that AI can recreate a human consciousness is scarcely different from the belief that a human can slot neatly into the categories of \u201cman\u201d and \u201cwoman.\u201d Both are dependent on binary systems and both deny the context Benjamin saw as vitally important to authenticity. If you looked at me today you may not even realize I was transgender at all, or you may struggle to identify what flavor of trans I am. I have experienced life as a girl, as a woman, and as a man. I came to the personal conclusion that all of it leaves me feeling a bit limited. Understanding my personal context requires recognizing that I was raised as a girl, transitioned to a man, and then decided my gender was better expressed abstractly.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is not exclusive to gender. How many people in our capitalist society identify with their career? Asked to \u201ctell me about yourself,\u201d they start with \u201cI\u2019m a nurse.\u201d What happens when that nurse pursues a PhD, becomes a professor and starts to teach?<\/p>\n Everything they experienced as a child, a medical student, as a practitioner, what kind of nursing they worked in \u2014 all is necessary context to understand the kind of teacher they will be. At the same time, you cannot look at their high school marching band photo and insist \u201cyou aren\u2019t a teacher, you\u2019re a sousaphonist.\u201d<\/p>\n Complexity is best addressed off screen<\/p>\n Abstract thinking is something AI so far has been pretty bad at, though every day it eerily improves. Humans are actually quite good at it. We learn the importance of time and place very early on in our psychosocial development. Still, we tend to find ourselves uncomfortable when it comes to the ambiguity within. We flock to astrology, gender roles and personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a debunked<\/a> system which purports to sort the human personality into boxes that reveal some innate truth about the test taker. We long to be given a concrete, objective answer to the question, \u201cwho are you?\u201d<\/p>\n Writing \u201cAURA\u201d was for me a deeply personal project, inspired by my own relationship with my mother, responding to the vicious attacks on trans people in our country today and the general lack of representation for trans media narratives that are more complex than \u201cmy mom kicked me out\u201d or \u201cmy mom accepted me.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAURA\u201d is not just a chance to cast trans people and tell a trans story. It\u2019s a message for all of us. There is a reason this project does not take the form of a short film you can stream or novel you can read at a bar while waiting for someone else to approach and ask you about it \u2013 it\u2019s a piece of theatre. I am interested in assembly, in getting people into rooms with each other, where strangers are encouraged to laugh at the same joke, to hear the person behind them laugh at something they don\u2019t think is very funny at all, and to generally exist for an hour or so in the same ephemeral sweaty, smelly darkness. That is why \u201cAURA\u201d is a play about the dangers of turning to AI when other humans are complicated and cruel. The recommended course of action when someone you love is experiencing AI psychosis is to convince them to log off and to encourage real human interaction.<\/p>\n \u201cAURA\u201d is me reaching out a hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n AURA will have an abridged performance at the Kelly Strayhorn Theatre\u2019s Alloy Studio on October 3 and 4 at 7:30 pm.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/DA_QueerAI-MacKenzie-7.jpg\")
Left to right, Mal MacKenzie gestures as Sarah Dugan and Audrey Wells look on during a rehearsal of “AURA.” (Photo by Danny Arensberg\/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)<\/p>\n![\"Person](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/DA_QueerAI-MacKenzie-2.jpg\")
Mal MacKenzie poses for a portrait at KST’s Alloy Studios, Sept. 25. MacKenzie’s upcoming play “AURA” is about a mother who creates an AI chatbot to retain an artificial, cisgender version of her still-living child. (Photo by Danny Arensberg\/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)<\/p>\n