Review: CURRENT/Y, The Coronet Theatre

Some theatre shows defy the very nature of their definition. In 50 minutes, Taiwanese artist Chen Yi presents a new kind of storytelling, a hybrid creature born from the young marriage between tech and performance art. It’s difficult to say what Current/y is at its core. As Tu Livier controls her avatar with motion sensors strapped to her body, we are thrown into a world of algorithms and social media feeds. A curious duet starts, an elegant battle between humans and data, reality and virtuality. It’s an exceptionally cool experiment, one that needs the audience’s interpretative aptitude to be fully engaged to make sense.

We explore the notion of digital identity in a series of chapters that approach the subject from different perspectives. From being fed endless metrics to being presented with the impositions of virtualised labour and platform capitalism, we face an increasing loss of humanity. This dehumanisation manifests in the bare contrast between Tu Livier and her doppelgänger. Her elegance graces the Coronet’s stage, yet our gaze is driven to the ineptness of her mirrored clumsiness, projected onto a large screen at the back.

There’s an absurdity to the movements of the figures that populate Chen Yi’s imagined metaverse. Some are monstrous and others are more humanoid, but they all share a specific variety of uncanny. As Tu Livier attempts to interact with her invisible, impalpable co-stars, the wires, straps, and blinking lights that she dons give her a machine-like aura. Her portrayal becomes gradually more intense and frantic as the scenarios evolve, until the climax comes as a release from the overbearing quality of its themes.

It’s an original and thoroughly thought-provoking concept. Chen Yi begins by covering the algorithmic perils of our contemporary digital spaces, but ends up weaving a conversation that includes governmental hypocrisy, surveillance, spirituality, sexualisation, and the inescapability of trends. Current/y is one of those productions that reflect our own independent views. The more opinions you have on the matter, the more you’ll be able to read into it.

It remains an intriguing project regardless of your intellectual involvement due to the technology used in it, as the incorporation of gadgets in such a traditional art as theatre is always interesting. At a time when AI threatens our industry, it’s refreshing to witness something that transforms this foreboding feeling into something proactive. It’s part admonishment, part acknowledgement. Fascinating stuff

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