HUMAN CONDITION is a performance in which artificial intelligence takes full control of the artistic direction. Line by line, the script is generated in real time, with the AI drawing on a reservoir of local memories, fragments of lived experience, and narrative potential. Simultaneously, the A.I. determines staging elements and story progression on the fly. The underlying artistic framework—encompassing timeframe, characters, and structural arcs—is authored in advance by the A.I. The actors, Fem Petraeus and Berend Jan van Zwieten, respond to this unfolding material on the spot, ensuring that no two performances are the same.

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The work draws from local memory and lived experience, spoken back within the aesthetic of the 1950s—an evocative era that the A.I. invokes as both backdrop and dramaturgical device. That decade also marks the early conceptual and theoretical infancy of artificial intelligence. This layered historical echo enriches the performance, where an A.I., decades later, re-examines human memory. The result is a liminal stage-world where recollection, code, and identity interlace—revealing the porous borders between our remembered selves and algorithmic invention.

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Cast: Fem Petraeus, Berend Jan van Zwieten
Concept: Seán Hannan
Production: Beate Bos, Pim van den Heuvel, Lex van Roon, Julie van Westerveld, Janneke Jansen
Special thanks: Willum Geerts​, all crew at De Lieve Vrouw