TRAGEDIA: The Hunt is the eight episode in the saga Humane Methods by Fronte Vacuo. The play subverts the classic tragedy as a mirror of the current Zeitgeist: a posthuman epic of oracles and shadows, of algorithms and chimaeras, of AIs and voices. On a continuously morphing stage, the iconic characters of the saga – the Officiant, the White Hoodies, the Deer, and a custom-made AI named “dmb” – unfold a vicious power struggle.

But there is no winner here, no hero. Their raging conflict is but a futile spectacle, whose resolution will be the birth of a radiant light, brighter than the sun, that will erase everything but hope. Through otherworldly symbolism, non-verbal performance, operatic voices, and 3D Audio experimental music, TRAGEDIA transfigures today’s impending environmental tragedy and erosion of social cohesion in an ecstatic, feverish experience.

Beginning from a bare landscape, the piece becomes increasingly layered as the action unfolds: mobile lights are progressively reconfigured in space, spatial music moves swiftly through dynamic surges, a stripe of soil becomes a border, then a terrain of conflict and eventually a path of hope. The AI character “dmb” is manifested through an interactive audiovisual system that responds to the human actors through live speech and videos. Thus, the play morphs, at first spacious, then cavernous and eventually sublime, luminous.

The central characters are the White Hoodies ‘U’ and ‘H’, two tragic semi-human figures left to their own devices after an unspoken catastrophe. As ‘U’ the apparent hero (actor Uwe Schmieder) becomes progressively infected by a lust for power, ‘H’, the ultimate heroine (operatic soprano Hasti Molavian), challenges his supremacist drive and, with the alliance of the sacred Deer, defies him in a final catharsis.