Almost Human? Looking at the Blurred Boundaries of Humanity

“Things were once simple, when everything that talked was a human being and everything which did not talk was not. You may be coming to an ending of the ways.” [1]

“Being human” seems ordinary enough to all human beings. In the past, we could easily recognize what constituted a “human.” Yet, in this era of rapid artificial intelligence development, the boundaries have begun to blur. 

In history and literature, the philosophical debate on the human and the machine has never truly ceased. Language, intellect, autonomy, love, sacrifice, and purpose were once viewed as the dividing lines between the two. We also once believed that “art” and “creativity” were the final bastions that machines could never breach. Little did we know, the leap into generative AI would soon make breakthroughs in painting, text, music, and video creation, even passing the Turing test between 2023 and 2024 [2]. This brings the public to re-examine the uniqueness of human: as the era of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) approaches, creations made purely by “humans” may become exceptionally rare and precious. What, then, counts as a “human”? As a future of symbiosis between AI and humanity becomes our present reality, how should we redefine the meaning of being human?

In contrast to the virtual and algorithmic nature of technology, traditional theatre is an art form centered on the human. From the display of an actor’s virtuosity and the meticulous polishing of gestures and vocal styles, to the real-time exchange of breath and emotion between the stage and the audience, these are the vital traits of traditional theatre. The staging of traditional theatre is not merely the restaging of a story; it is an interpretation of human values through the performance of loyalty, filial piety, love, hatred, life, and death. Thus, we, as the audience, see ourselves in the joys and sorrows of the characters, and truly feel the bonds of humanity and emotion within the theatrical space where the collective and the individual intertwine.

Six brilliant productions will guide us through art to delve into the light and darkness, the contradictions and fragility of human nature. By overlapping thoughts and emotions, the physical flesh and cybernetic prosthetics, the real and the digital, these works peer into the blurry boundary that divides the “human” and the “non-human.”

Classical mythology often imposes a sublime order on emotion, yet the origin of “being human” is filled with the irrationality and blindness of love. Heaven’s Gate by the Theatre of Unseen Heroes weaves campus imagery into a mythical fairyland, reinterpreting the Verses of Chu through youthful devotion, restoring love to its purest form of human infatuation.

With a century of heritage, the Chin Fei Feng Marionette Theatre troupe is Taiwan’s only professional marionette troupe. For their first collaboration with Keep on Dreaming, they present the cross-disciplinary work “Black Temple”. Starting from the wild and grotesque tale “Judge Lu” in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, the performance pulls at the darkness and obsessions of human nature with the strings of puppets. This fantastical, puppet-based plot transforms a deserted temple into a market of desire that measures humanity, directly probing the greed and anger of “being human.”

Approaching Theatre rearranges Cantonese opera, Taiwanese opera, and modern theatre, “resurrecting” the classic novel The Reincarnation of Red Plum on the contemporary stage. Between life and death, humans and ghosts, the performer and the alter-ego, “Echoes of the Red Plum” rips open the philosophical rift between life and death, reality and illusion through the “Hu Du Men” (literally meaning the Tiger’s Gate), taking the audience on a journey to explore the meaning of “being human.”

The candle extinguishing ritual in the Gathering of One Hundred Supernatural Tales was originally meant to summon eerie tales, but in “The Remains of Memory,” it becomes a metaphor for the dissolution of the physical body. This first collaboration between Sun Son Theatre and Taipei Quyi Tuan, uses ancient storytelling traditions and the physical presence of the body to confront a modern reality: a time and space where digital footprints endure forever, while our actual physical existence gradually fades away.

Interweaving traditional opera, dance, and martial arts, “ASKING FOR THE REAL” examines the boundaries of the physical body, consciousness, and the machine through a recurring cycle of memories looking back at life. It seeks to discover the irreplaceable shape of the soul that defines “being human.”

The rehearsal room is often where human nature is revealed in its truest form. “Two Uncles of Koa-á-hì” takes a meta-theatrical approach, dragging the audience directly into the rehearsal space. Through the technical sparring between director and actors, and amid the comedic collisions of constantly “getting things wrong,” they come to understand one another and look back at the very essence of performance.

Since ancient times, artistic creation has always reflected the various facets of human nature, while also satirizing and challenging our preconceived notions of human uniqueness. This year, Keep on Dreaming brings together six exceptional plays. They serve as a response to the dilemma of how traditional theatre, as a comprehensive art form steeped in human history and emotion, can address the “big questions” of our era in its own unique way. What kind of existence defines human beings, both as a collective and as individuals, out of all the living things on this planet? Through Keep on Dreaming, a diverse space for interpretation and contemplation is opened, sparking infinite contemporary imagination into what it means to be human.

Curator

Liu Chien-kuo∕Curator of Keep on Dreaming 2026

Playwright, director, actor, and researcher. Founder of the ChiChiao Musical Theatre. Liu currently serves as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Drama Creation and Application at the National University of Tainan. Liu’s creative repertoire spans Taiwanese opera, Yu opera, Peking opera, musicals, and contemporary theatre. Dedicated to inter-genre hybrid creations, Liu strives to expand the practical scope and organizational frameworks of traditional theatre through playwriting, directing, curating, and teaching. Her work has been honored as one of the Top Five Programs of the Year at the Taishin Arts Award. Aside from theatre creations, she has frequently been invited to direct and coordinate large-scale performing arts events, award ceremonies, and cultural festivals. In recent years, she has been consistently bridging creative practice, research, and academia, focusing on issues such as innovation in traditional theatre, cross-genre experimentation, theatrical translation, textual adaptation, and the production mechanisms of Taiwanese opera.

[1] Cordwainer Smith, “Under Old Earth,” first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in 1966. Excerpted from The Rediscovery of Man: The Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, 2018, published by ECUS Cultural Enterprise Ltd.

[2] Media outlets began reporting on this result in 2023, and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) published its research and experimental results on May 31, 2024. Oren Kun, “AI Wins the Game of Mimicking Humans: UCSD Study Shows GPT-4 Has Passed the Turing Test,” Oren Kun, VIVE Post-Wave website.