Examining future technology, human ties through theater
"Solo Date," a stunning exploration of artificial intelligence and lost love by Taiwanese playwright Tsai Pao-chang (蔡柏璋), is the latest play from Taiwan that raises profound ethnical questions surrounding the interactive technologies that humankind increasingly relies upon.
"Solo Date" tells the story of Ho-Nien, who attempts to reconstruct his deceased lover through artificial intelligence and social media. Innovative, elegant, and deeply moving, this one-man theater production uses new media to explore loneliness and longing, desire, death, human loss, and need.
Director Tsai is an award-winning playwright, actor, and co-artistic director of Tainaner Ensemble, a significant performance powerhouse based in southern Taiwan that uses the Taiwanese language to adapt western dramas.
As an established queer artist, Tsai and his highly contemporary and engaged works not only give voice to an emerging cultural movement in Taiwan, his creative processes and cultural productions also shed light on the struggles and achievements of the LGBTQ community in Taiwan and Asia today.
"Solo Date," was previously performed at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival ("Visually stunning, intellectually and emotionally challenging, and funny; this piece cuts to the heart of contemporary concerns, and provides a radically new dimension to the timeless theme of love" ― The Skinny) and the 2018 San Francisco International Arts Festival ("Solo Date deals with pressing issues that speak very much to multiple Bay Area audiences" ― Festival Director Andrew Wood).
More information on the talented playwright can be found here.