CreatripTeam

Swipe!, a new production by contemporary theater group Umion, upends traditional stage rules to explore blurred boundaries between AI and humans, technology and emotion. Set in a near future where data-uploaded ancestors and spectral counterparts coexist, the play follows a Hamlet-like protagonist torn between a resurrected father (via uploaded data) and a ghostly father, questioning what is real. The staging breaks theatrical conventions: audience members may record with smartphones and come and go, live camera feeds project performers onto large screens, and autonomous objects (e.g., moving ping-pong balls, vibrating fishing rods) interact via radio signals as nonhuman agents. These elements dismantle the usual hierarchy of staging and create an ecosystem where human actors, objects, and screens overlap. Swipe! asks whether a secluded theater sanctuary still matters in an always-connected world and probes how to feel and behave alongside AI agents and IoT devices. Running at Daehangno Small Theater through the 26th, the production was praised at the Seoul Art Market for sharply portraying human-technology coexistence and advancing posthuman theatrical language.