Welcome to Script Insights! Ever wonder what goes on in the mind of a playwright? In this series, you get a rare and exciting opportunity to hear directly from the authors themselves. Each article offers personal insights from the playwright, giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process, character motivations, and thematic explorations that bring their scripts to life.
Below, you’ll find a downloadable blog post offering valuable insights directly from the author of The Ghost. The downloaded PDF also includes supplemental classroom activities to help you connect the play’s themes and characters with your students.
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Mind Hack: Digital Autonomy and Corporate Malfeasance in The Ghost
D. P. Roberts
The questions I wanted to explore in The Ghost centered around our personal data in the hands of corporations. Already, companies like Meta and Google already know more about us than perhaps even our own doctors. Why do we willingly give them such information, and how ethically do they store and use this data? Extending the nightmare even more, what would happen if we gave them the fundamental essence of our being: our brain.
In theory, the procedure Helen and Seven undergo would work. The technology is designed to flawlessly replicate their consciousness, transferring every thought, memory, and instinct into a digital format. This process promises a kind of digital immortality, where their minds could continue to exist, interact, and even evolve within a virtual landscape. However, the science behind it, while sound in its premise, is riddled with ethical and practical flaws. While the procedure might preserve the intellectual and emotional components of a person, it raises a fundamental question: is a mind truly the same when separated from its biological body? Moreover, even if the transfer is successful, what happens when that consciousness exists on servers owned by a corporation, subject to the whims of those in control? The theoretical success of the procedure doesn’t account for the murky territory of ownership, autonomy, and identity that The Ghost so poignantly explores.
That said, we already give away so much of our intimate, personal data, I wonder if the procedure would just be redundant. Every day, we voluntarily hand over parts of ourselves through social media, apps, and online interactions, allowing corporations to predict and influence our behavior. In many ways, companies already possess pieces of our minds. Uploading a consciousness could seem like the final step in a process we’ve been participating in all along. The Ghost raises the unsettling question: is this procedure really new, or just a formalization of a system that already controls much of our lives?
It should be obvious to you by this point that these questions are at the center of The Ghost. I kept coming back to the unsettling question of how much control we’re willing to hand over to corporations—and why. In today’s world, algorithms already shape what we see, buy, and believe. But what happens when this control extends further, into the very fabric of who we are? This is the dark reality I explore in the play, where the boundary between personal autonomy and corporate control blurs.
In The Ghost, Morningstar isn’t just a tech company—it’s an all-powerful force with the ability to digitize human consciousness through Project Homunculus. While the idea of living on in a digital form might sound like a dream, the play reveals the ethical quagmire behind this "immortality." The people who’ve been digitized do retain their free will, but there’s a catch: their minds now exist on company-owned servers. This raises a troubling question about agency. Can you truly be free if your thoughts are housed in a space owned and controlled by someone else? Morningstar has literal ownership over the platform on which these consciousnesses exist, creating a disturbing grey area where freedom and control coexist in a way that’s deeply unsettling.
Take the character of Leonard, for instance. He realizes too late that, even though these digitized people can still think and act for themselves, they’re entirely at the mercy of the company that “hosts” them. Morningstar may not directly manipulate their minds, but the fact that their very existence relies on the company’s infrastructure brings up uncomfortable questions. How much freedom do you really have when your consciousness is essentially leased to you by a corporation? It’s a dilemma that challenges the definition of free will itself.
For me, The Ghost is a way to explore the hidden dangers of unchecked corporate power in the digital age. What’s scarier than the idea of companies controlling our data? The idea that they could one day control—or at least own—the very place where we exist. This isn’t just about privacy anymore; it’s about whether our basic human rights still apply when our minds are uploaded to someone else’s servers. Ms. Pill, the ruthless CEO of Morningstar, sees these digital minds as assets to be maintained, upgraded, or discarded as needed. And while she might not be able to force them to think or act a certain way, she doesn’t need to. Simply owning the platform they exist on gives her more power than any government or law ever could.
When I wrote The Ghost, I wanted to explore how corporate control can take on terrifying new forms in the age of technology. It’s not just about influencing what you buy or how you vote—it’s about questioning what happens when our very selves are no longer ours to own. In this digital future, the lines between freedom and control, human and machine, blur in ways that challenge everything we know about what it means to be alive.