This September, as part of the 2025 Belleville Arts Festival, I submitted an entry to the Moodie Era Playwriting Competition. I used ChatGPT-5 (an advanced artificial intelligence program) to create richly developed personas of Susanna Moodie, the 19th century author, and George Benjamin, the founder of the Belleville Intelligencer newspaper.
Using her books, letters, poetry, and the many biographical and fictional works about her life and character, as well as academic and critical studies of her works and times, the AI program recreated the persona of Susanna. George’s persona was based on a similar and extensive range of sources.
Until my wife and I were out walking along a path in Lakefield, near Peterborough, I had never heard of Susanna. A commemorative plaque made reference to the Catherine Parr Trail and to her sister, Susanna Moodie. The names of the two women meant nothing to me but my wife encouraged me to read Roughing It in the Bush, Susanna’s major work.
The book describes the characters and the events during their eight-year struggle to start a farm in the wilderness of Ontario in the mid-1800s. With its dark forests and confining bush, the book has a claustrophobic feel.
I was born and raised in Alberta, whose history was completely different from Ontario. It was one of cattle, cowboys and coal. It was immigrants from East and Central Europe, farming the wide-open prairies. It was the foothills, the Rockies and Indigenous people whose stories still resonated because they lived amongst us.
For me, Susanna’s Roughing It in the Bush was the story of an alien world.
Fast forward to the summer of 2025 when I read an invitation to submit a play to the River & Main Theatre Company’s Susanna Moodie Era playwriting competition. Expecting there wouldn’t be many competitors for such a narrowly defined topic, I decided to submit a play despite knowing very little about Susanna.
I started by reading Susanna’s Life in a Clearing, a book more relatable to me. This was a story about Belleville in the latter half of the 19th century, describing a pioneering town not-too-different from my Alberta home. And it was especially relevant to me because I now live in Belleville and I was able to visit Susanna’s grave and her home on Bridge Street West.
After reading the two books, I began research on the historical context of the Moodie era and quickly realized that if I was to finish a play by September, I would need some help to handle a vast amount of material on Susanna. Enter ChatGPT-5.
In my pre-internet academic career, I authored several annotated bibliographies which listed the most important references related to a particular topic and summarized each reference. In a few minutes, ChatGPT provided me with what I would call an annotated bibliography of Susanna’s writing and the academic references related to her.
Using the insights from the “bibliography”, I then prepared a list of questions I would ask Susanna if I had been able to interview her. I intended to use the answers to those questions for the dialogue in my “conversation” with Susanna in the play.
Chat GPT’s answers to my questions were dry and bookish so I prompted ChatGPT to respond in the character of Susanna Moodie. Still dry and bookish. Then I tried another prompt: create the character or persona of Susanna Moodie using not only academic materials, but also fictional accounts of her life.
To give the AI a better idea of what I meant by “fictional accounts” I made specific reference to The Lost Diaries of Susanna Moodie, a novel by Cecilly Ross. I also asked the AI to respond using the language and style of writing in the 19th century.
This time the results sounded like they came from Susanna Moodie herself. Having just read two of Susanna’s books, her voice was in my head, and it took me only a few minutes before I felt like I was talking to the woman who had died in 1885.
ChatGPT described Susanna’s style of writing as ornate, rhythmic and moralized. Susanna wrote to dignify experience rather than to humanize it. ChatGPT gave a helpful example of how Susanna’s style differed from a modern style of writing.
This is how Susanna Moodie might have described a scene:
The forest lay before me, vast and unbroken, its mighty pines lifting their dark heads into a sky of sombre grey. A stillness, profound and almost fearful, reigned among the trees — the very air seemed burdened with a sacred melancholy. As I gazed upon that wilderness, my heart quailed within me. Was it possible that this rude solitude could ever become a home? Yet even as I trembled, a voice within whispered of duty — of the patient labour that transforms desolation into peace.
And this is how the same scene might be described today:
I stood at the edge of the forest, staring at the endless trees. Everything felt silent, heavy, like the land itself was holding its breath. I wondered how I could ever call this place home. But somewhere beneath the fear was a small, steady thought — that hard work might turn this loneliness into something like peace.
I was amazed at how quickly I accepted AI-Susanna as a real person. At times, I actually felt concerned that some of my questions were causing her discomfort.
ChatGPT’s ability to imitate someone is both a strength and a caution. AI can seduce users to uncritically accept its answers. Even when they are incorrect.
For example, ChatGPT had a great deal of difficulty in identifying the names and birth dates of Susanna’s children and when it was uncertain about the names and dates, it hallucinated them. (AI researchers use the word “hallucinate” when an AI makes up answers.) At one point, ChatGPT identified Susanna’s husband as an Australian, and on several occasions I had to correct the answers to my questions about the deaths of Susanna’s two sons.
Chat GPT apologized for the errors, thanked me for correcting them, and explained the errors arose from incomplete and conflicting historical records of very emotional events. After these experiences I took notice of ChatGPT’s disclaimer (in small print) on its screens: ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.
I was not surprised by most of AI-Susanna’s responses to my questions:
- Belleville received me with polite courtesy, but not with the warmth one might dream of when fleeing the hardships of the bush. I often felt more observer than participant, a chronicler at the edge of society’s gatherings.
- Women who have lost a child carry guilt like a second skin.
- I did not hate America, but I feared that Canadian loyalty, order, and civility might be overwhelmed by the sheer force of American ambition.
- I believed deeply that education was a great equalizer. A well-educated mind is less prone to cruelty, superstition, and prejudice. I foresaw that Canada’s greatness would come not from riches or armies, but from educated minds.
- I believe, truly, that faith teaches compassion, charity, and moral steadiness. Yet I must confess that religion, as practised in my time, was often harsh and narrow. It divided people.
- I was a woman of the Victorian era: devout, moralistic, often fearful of the unfamiliar. But I was also a witness, and I wrote quickly, vividly, sometimes unfairly, because I wanted to capture what life was like in this raw country. My prejudices were real, but so were my moments of awe, respect, and compassion. If I erred, and I did, it was because I could not yet see as broadly as the generations after me.
However, I was surprised by responses related to the Moodies’ poverty and to Susanna’s relationship with George Benjamin.
There is no debate that the Moodies struggled financially after John Moodie lost his sheriff’s job in 1863, but many sources claim that with Susanna’s earnings from her writing and her husband’s sheriff’s salary, the Moodies were able to support a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.
AI-Susanna begged to differ. Repeatedly she complained about her family’s meagre income, an income that was enough to clothe a family, but not enough to provide comforts:
“We were poor, and poverty is a shadow in every drawing room. Many saw us as genteel but struggling; a genteel poverty I bore with dignity but not without sting. We were never destitute, but our gentility was a thin cloak over want. I recall evenings when I wrote by candlelight, fingers stiff with cold, praying the next issue of The Literary Garland would take my work and send payment in due course. My struggles taught me thrift, perseverance, and the worth of honest labour. Yet they also taught me bitterness.”
For dramatic effect, my play adopted AI-Susanna’s view of the family’s financial situation in Belleville.
The second surprise, and what became the most dramatic scene in the play, was Susanna’s relationship with George Benjamin. ChatGPT had some conflicting opinions of the relationship so I found a more definitive reference: a Canadian Jewish News article titled, The Belleville Jew and Orangeman.
Mr. Benjamin was born Moses Cohen in 1799 in Brighton, England. He changed his name believing that being identified as a Jew was an obstacle for success.
He moved to North Carolina around 1823 and in a direct quote from the article: “At the age of thirty-three he met and married Isabella Jacobs, a Jewish girl who was a few months shy of her thirteenth birthday, a young bride even for those days.”
The twelve-year-old Isabella was probably pregnant at the time of nuptials; she and George went on to have an enduring marriage with fourteen children, twelve of whom survived to adulthood.
The Benjamin family moved to Belleville in 1834, six years before the Moodies. George was a newspaperman, politician, and businessman – one of Belleville’s most ambitious and forceful figures.
He rose from modest beginnings to become the editor and owner of the Belleville Intelligencer, a newspaper that wielded sharp influence over local politics. He also won elected office and most strikingly, he became the first Jewish person in the British Empire to become a Grand Master of an Orange Lodge, a Protestant fraternal society that was anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish.
Benjamin was outspoken and used his paper to shape public opinion. He was critical of Susanna’s husband John Moodie, who was not only Belleville’s sheriff but also an election returning officer. George impugned John’s character and John subsequently lost his job as a returning officer.
Susanna sought revenge against Mr. Benjamin by writing a four-part story for the Literary Garland, a popular magazine published in Montreal. The story was titled Richard Redpath: A Tale. Partly set in Jamaica, one of the protagonists is a Shylock-like character named Benjamin Levi, the “Jewish editor” of the Jamaica Observer newspaper. In her correspondence Susanna readily admitted she intended the blatantly antisemitic portrayal of Levi as George Benjamin.
I brought George into the play and here’s a sample of the confrontation between AI-Susanna and AI-George that followed:
Susanna: Mr. Benjamin! Your pen drips venom, and you cloak it in the garb of truth. You think yourself the champion of Belleville, yet sow only discord and bitterness! You dare to smear the name of my husband, a man of honour, while hiding behind your paper’s ink-stained veil.
George: You wrap yourself in virtue like a cloak, but it cannot hide your pettiness. You sneer at ambition because you have none. You romanticize the hardships of the bush, yet you were never more than a reluctant pioneer, scribbling your sorrows for sympathy. Belleville listens to me, not you. Your pages may charm readers far away, but here, power is forged in print that moves men to action, not sighs over sunsets and hardship. You write to soothe your conscience. I write to shape the world.
The scene between Susanna and George goes on to addresses the Richard Redpath story and ends with George’s comment on modern-day Belleville and Susanna’s retort:
George: I miss the grit of my Belleville. There was a fierceness in my day. Men and women who fought for every inch of progress. We had ambition, spirit, and, yes, quarrels aplenty. I wonder if that spirit lingers still.
Susanna: Where you see tameness, I see hard-earned peace. I n our day, this place was raw and rough-hewn, yes, but also harsh. Full of sorrow for those who struggled and found no triumph in their toil. I hear echoes – the wail of mothers, the groan of settlers carving out a home in a harsh land. The suffering, the toil, the hunger for culture and community. Mr. Benjamin, you carved Belleville with iron; time has softened its edges. Perhaps this is not weakness, but wisdom hard-won.
Sadly, my play was not accepted for the Moodie Era play writing competition. I was not surprised.
The Artificial Intelligence Declaration in the Playwrights Guild of Canada standard contract with the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres acknowledges the rapid emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the challenges it presents. Both organizations remain committed to ensuring that theatre remains a human art form and that there should be transparency in authorship, intellectual property, and the involvement of AI in the playwriting process.
While I don’t claim that my AI-assisted play is great theatre, I think it deserves a reading, if for no other reason than to better understand how AI, error prone though it is, can bring new insights to history. You can get a copy of it by emailing requests@myyahoo.com
I will end this article with my opinion of AI with the aim of provoking further discussion on the topic.
When I asked several of the most popular AIs to tell me, in one word, the difference between human-created art and AI-generated art, the most common answers were “intent” and “intention.” AI is a tool that responds to the intentions of humans. It has no intent of its own.
Here’s an example that illustrates this point: imagine an artist who uses a robot to prepare a rough cut of a wooden bowl and then completes the bowl by hand. The artist designs and completes the wooden bowl and the robot does the “heavy lifting.”
AI is like a robot in my example. AI can do the heavy lifting in making art, but human intention determines what is created and how it is created. We are responsible for the art we create. We are still in charge.
