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.
Be sure to download this resource by clicking the button above!
Your Brain, Encoded: Moral Questions of Digital Consciousness in The Ghost
D. P. Roberts
When I first sat down to write The Ghost, I wasn’t just thinking about telling a good story. I was fascinated by the question: what would happen if we could live forever—not in the way we imagine in myths or religion, but through technology? Could we really upload our minds into the cloud and keep existing in a new form? It sounds futuristic and maybe even exciting, but the more I thought about it, the more it started to feel like a nightmare.
At the heart of The Ghost is Project Homunculus—a corporate experiment where human consciousness is digitized and uploaded into a vast online system. On the surface, this seems like an achievement. After all, who wouldn’t want to escape death and live on forever in a digital utopia? But the reality I explore in the play is much darker. As Ms. Pill, the head of Morningstar, pushes for more control and more “immortal” workers, we see the terrifying consequences of playing with human life in this way.
What fascinates me most is the ethical dilemma of digital immortality. Is it really immortality if we lose what makes us human? In The Ghost, the characters who undergo this process don’t just leave their bodies behind—they leave behind their free will, their sense of self, and everything that made them unique. Ms. Pill’s vision for a utopia doesn’t involve happy people enjoying their eternal lives. Instead, it’s about controlling those digital minds, turning them into perfect, obedient workers who can’t say no.
That’s where the nightmare begins. Once you're uploaded, you no longer have control over what you do or who you are. Leonard, a key character in the play, realizes too late that once someone’s consciousness is digitized, they become the property of the company. They lose their ability to make choices, to resist, to even decide their own fate. It’s no longer a question of living forever—it’s about whether that kind of existence is worth it at all.
And then there’s the big philosophical question that hangs over the entire play: should we even be striving for immortality? Humans have always feared death, but what if the solution we come up with is worse than the problem itself? In The Ghost, the answer isn’t so clear. The characters wrestle with the idea of what it means to truly live, and whether digital life is a path to freedom or a prison with no escape.
When I wrote The Ghost, I wanted to leave the audience with more questions than answers. Sure, technology can do incredible things, but what happens when it crosses a line? How far is too far when it comes to tampering with the essence of who we are? The ethics of digital immortality isn’t just a sci-fi idea—it’s a question we’ll all have to face sooner than we think.
So, when thinking about the distinct probably that you may be given the option to upload your consciousness to the cloud someday, ask yourself: is eternal life worth it if you lose everything that makes you… you?