Theatre of the Future: Choreography of Flesh and Steel – A conversation with pioneer of human-machine performance Ulrike Quade

Interview by Hayel Ali Al-Mathabi 

This is an abridged version of an interview translated into Englis h. Find the full interview in Arabic published in Arab Theater Magazine.

 

At the heart of the radical transformations taking place in contemporary performance, the work of Netherlands-based director and scenographer Ulrike Quade stands out as a bridge between the richness of tradition and the precision of technology.

Ulrike Quade is a theater maker and artistic researcher. She creates visual theater at the intersection of scenography, technology, science and society. With a background in Japanese puppetry and a Master in Scenography (Central Saint Martins, London & HKU, Utrecht) she investigates how form, space and technology create meaning and raise questions about our humanity. 

Her work examines the influence of technological developments such as AI, digital networks and robotics. Quade sees theater as a space for experiment and research, where urgent social issues become imaginable, visible, and tangible. 

As an artistic researcher, she actively engages in societal and academic discourses on how technology influences daily life and how people influence its development. From a critical-performative perspective and with a creative approach, she involves students, researchers, and artists in this dialogue. Ulrike Quade collaborates internationally with scientific and artistic partners and received the Wim Meilink Prize for her oeuvre. 

 

Al-Mathabi: As a classically trained puppeteer, what was the definitive moment that led you from “wood and fabric” to “steel and software”?

Quade: I discovered the material limitations of the puppets were my limitations as a theater maker. 

As a puppeteer trained in Japan with a master’s degree in scenography, I spent years puppeteering not just objects but entire spaces. My performances have always focused on the design of the environment of the puppet as much as on the puppet itself. I wanted to show true transformation – what I call “shapeshifting.” A wooden puppet can suggest change, but it cannot become something else before your eyes. The material itself resists. 

Digital puppetry and avatars gave me bodies that could morph. Video images and designed sound spaces had been part of my work for years. We call it “animated scenography” – using theater mechanics to transform the world around the puppet. Motion capture and game engines like Unreal entered later, allowing me to shapeshift entire environments in real time. 

When I started working with KUKA industrial robots in 2020 with Maaike Bleeker at Utrecht University, I wasn’t abandoning traditional puppetry – I was expanding what “puppet” could mean. This collaboration is part of  Dramaturgy for Devices , a four-year research program funded by the Dutch Science Agenda. It builds on our earlier program, Acting Like a Robot. The collaborations build on each other; the research becomes broader and the philosophical questions reach further. 

To come back to your question of wood versus steel. I would like to rephrase it to static versus fluid. Theater has always been about transformation. Now the materials can finally “shapeshift” and match that ambition. 

Al-Mathabi : In your work, industrial KUKA arms move with organic fluidity. How do you balance their mechanical nature with the “illusion of life” required in puppetry? 

Quade: The first question we ask is: how does the KUKA breathe? We start with sound – what music does it make? How does its voice sound? Then we move to movement patterns, looking at two modes: presentation and representation. When is the KUKA moving efficiently toward a task, mechanically? And when is the KUKA exploring, making up movement patterns without efficiency as the goal? 

That second mode can be approximate like dance. A robot taken out of the industrial habitat can act like a performer who plays, writes, listens. This is where poetry arises. And here’s the deeper question: what is the body of the KUKA? The robot has six axes – six points of articulation. We want to see the human body reflected in it, but that’s our projection. We’re looking for the body of the KUKA itself, and how to change our perception so that we might see the KUKA differently – not as a replacement for the human player, but as its own form of presence. 

The illusion of the KUKA being a non-human player on stage comes from discovering what “aliveness” means when the performer is made of steel. 

Al-Mathabi: How do you define the onstage relationship between the human actor, the traditional puppet, and the robot? Who leads whom in this choreography? 

Quade: The material always leads the human. This is fundamental to puppetry: the puppet leads the puppeteer. And the KUKA puppeteers the human, too. We had to discover this through different approaches in our research sprints – focused periods of exploration where we isolated specific relationships. 

In one sprint, we looked at puppet and KUKA as their own world. In another, we researched each world separately – the puppet’s world and the KUKA’s world. The KUKA is the world most “unknown” to us, so it demanded the most attention. 

Then we let different elements lead the creation. When music and voice led the performance, the outcome was opera. When movement led, we focused on intuitive body work, mime principles, improvisation techniques with the outcome being dance and theater. 

What emerged is this: there is no fixed hierarchy. The question shifts depending on what you’re trying to create. Sometimes the human performer leads. Sometimes the KUKA’s mechanical rhythm dictates the tempo. Sometimes the traditional puppet becomes the bridge between flesh and steel. 

The choreography is an exercise of listening – to wood, to code, to what breath can mean and to the sound of the motors. Composing all these elements together is creating the illusion of the KUKA being alive. 

Al-Mathabi : Do you approach robot programming as a technical setup, or do you view it as “rehearsing” a digital actor? 

Quade: We rehearse with the robot like we rehearse with a performer. We have live control of the KUKA while we rehearse. We’re looking for the incident, the liveness, the poetry behind and inside the technical. First we rehearse – exploring, improvising, discovering. Then we program what we found, capturing those moments so we can use them in the next rehearsal. This reverses the usual workflow. Most robots are first programmed to execute predefined actions. Instead, we discover first, then preserve. 

It’s the same principle as working with a dancer or actor. You don’t block the scene before you’ve explored the space. You let the performer find the movement, then you shape it. The KUKA is no different – except that when it finds something beautiful, we can save it perfectly, repeat it endlessly, and build variations from that foundation. Programming becomes a documentation of discovery. In the end, the KUKA is our most predictable actor. 

Al-Mathabi : In Orito , what specific statement were you making about the future of the human body as it merges with digital technology? 

Quade: In my work I ask the question: what arises when the human body and digital technology come together? Between organic and synthetic grows a new form of existence. Something third emerges. Relationships create new life forms. Neither human nor machine stays unchanged by the encounter. 

Intelligence demands as many words as we have in the Netherlands for rain – dozens, each with its own specific meaning. We are entering one of the great transformations humanity has faced, however our vocabulary and ways of thinking have not yet caught up. 

In Orito , we work with a sentence from David Mitchell’s novel  The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet : “The soul is not a noun, it’s a verb.” To find ensoulment, we must look for movement and relationships, for dynamic connections between agents on stage. The soul exists in the between-space, in the interaction. 

There is a specific moment in Orito where the audience experiences this viscerally. The KUKA is gigantic and powerful, almost frightening at first. But through the music written by composer Stephanie Pan and the libretto by co-director Lisenka Heijboer Castañón, the robot begins to breathe. It takes over the stage and narrative the way a puppet starts “being alive” through its breath. 

After a while, the KUKA becomes softer. It starts doing things we haven’t seen it do before. It can matter. It can carry puppets and people. It can draw. Through these gestures, we imagine futures that are collaborative, organic, tender – not only the production-driven world of metal and steel. We see how the KUKA takes care of the bodies on stage. That’s when the audience gasps: when the industrial machine becomes a caregiver. 

Al-Mathabi: Theater relies on the “present moment.” Does the rigid programming of a robot limit the improvisational freedom of the human performer? 

Quade: Yes, and that limitation produces a different kind of poetry. The KUKA definitely limits the physical freedom the performer has on stage. But as a puppeteer, I learned something crucial from my first teacher in Japan, Hoichi Okamoto: you move 20% and make sure the puppet moves 80% to achieve optical balance. As a puppeteer, you are already extremely limited. 

The quality of the performance will always be more mechanical with the KUKA, simply because the robot is part of it. A lot of pre-programming happens in the rehearsal period, and then the focus of the performer shifts – from delivering material and co-creating with the KUKA to following set phrases. 

The strongest limitation is the KUKA’s strength and weight. The performer must be careful of their own safety. Once the movements are captured and programmed, the KUKA becomes a very reliable dance partner. But working with limitations and finding the freedom within them is the process of every rehearsal. That’s true with traditional puppets, with actors, with space, with time. The KUKA is no different. 

Al-Mathabi: On the question of scenography, how does the presence of a huge robotic arm change your perception of stage space and choreographic design? 

Quade: The KUKA forced me to rethink how worlds transform. As a scenographer, I’ve always wanted to move the set. In my pieces, the characters undergo transformation, and that transformation must change their surroundings. The world cannot stay the same once the player in it has changed. It’s an interaction. 

The KUKA is rigid and heavy – it’s not easy to move. I wanted to put it on rails, which is technically possible, but then the stage fills with tracks and leaves no space for the performers. So we chose video projections of KUKAs and shadows to emphasize multiplicity – to suggest more than one robot without the physical burden. We add multiple KUKAs in sound. 

The KUKA is also limited in its range of movement. It was designed to work in car factories, so its strength is in small, millimeter-precise actions. When we used two KUKA arms to manipulate one puppet in the installation AI-x during the 2022 Floriade project, we saw this limitation clearly. That’s when we decided to let go of the puppet body entirely and use the KUKA arms as the puppet’s body instead. 

We had to think in different ways. The outcome was a hybrid form – beyond human, puppet, and robot, something that could only exist through their collaboration. The massive robotic arm doesn’t just occupy space. It reorganizes what space means. It demands that we look at it differently. 

Al-Mathabi : How has the audience responded? Do they feel “uncanny valley” anxiety, or do they develop genuine empathy for the machine as a dramatic character? 

Quade: People feel the power of the machine first. Then something shifts. In the case of the KUKA, audiences get scared. They refer to it as an industrial instrument. The uncanniness doesn’t come from the “uncanny valley” effect – that strange discomfort when something looks almost-but-not-quite human. The fear comes from context, from the background information that audiences bring with them. They know that much of this research is funded by military interests, developed with political agendas. The KUKA is used in weapons manufacturing. That knowledge walks into the theater with them. 

But then, as I described earlier, the robot begins to breathe. It cares. It carries. It draws. The audience watches a machine they feared becoming tender. That transformation – from weapon to caregiver – is the emotional core of the work. The empathy emerges, because we show what it could become. The audience doesn’t forget the robot’s origins. They experience the possibility that technology’s future is not predetermined. We are the ones who decide what these machines do. That realization is both terrifying and liberating. 

Al-Mathabi: You are known for your interest in Japanese Bunraku. How do those ancient manipulation techniques inform your modern robotic direction? 

Quade: Bunraku taught me to remove myself from the center – and that practice shapes everything. First, I notice that software is often developed with ancient Bunraku techniques in mind, whether the programmers realize it or not. The logic of shared manipulation, of visible operators, of disciplined movement – these principles translate directly into code. 

But more importantly, I’ve been directing theater informed by Japanese Bunraku Theater for 30 years. That tradition shaped how I look at people, how I think about the world. To put myself out of the center of attention and act like a puppeteer means I listen to material. My work is to come to know the other and the otherness. 

I want to say that I am an expert in that: removing the human and the human ego from the center, placing myself inside the other agency, the other life form. That life form looks very different from the human form. 

Traditional Bunraku puppets represent humans, yes. But as ancient forms, these puppets were originally gods and ghosts stored in temples and brought to the streets on celebration days. The non-human was presented. The larger-than-life. 

This is what I bring to robotic theatre: the practice of meeting the non-human on its own terms as another form of presence worthy of respect and study. The discipline is centuries old but the technology is perceived as new. The principle is the same: listen to what the material wants to become. 

Al-Mathabi: Do you view cables and motors as part of the aesthetic to be showcased, or do you prefer to hide the technology to preserve the “magic”? 

Quade: I always show the strings. Robots and technology on stage cannot work as ‘magic’ for an hour or two. The same is true for puppets. It is the context that brings them to life for some ‘magic’ moments. The KUKA therefore shifts from player to stage design and background during the play. 

I like to show the strings attached – not always literally, but conceptually. I want to show that the human is the manipulator and that autonomous machines are a fairy tale. All machines are programmed and operated by people. Without humans, the machinery is empty. 

Humans as part of the experience are very important – to surprise, to keep the audience engaged, but also to maintain ethical clarity. When you see the operator, you understand agency. You understand choice. This is an aesthetic decision as well as a political one. 

Right now, we’re being sold a story about artificial intelligence as independent, objective, neutral. But every algorithm has a designer. Every dataset reflects choices about what to include and exclude. Every “smart” system serves someone’s interests. 

In my theater, you see who holds the controls. You watch the relationship between humans and machines. You’re invited to think about who benefits, who decides, who takes responsibility. The cables and motors aren’t obstacles to beauty. They’re evidence of connection. They’re proof that these machines don’t act alone. Showing the mechanism is showing who acts. 

Al-Mathabi: Do you foresee a time when a “robotic actor” can autonomously perform a complex Shakespearean tragedy? 

Quade: Complex, yes. Autonomous, no. The systems we are building with technology and AI are systems that will change the way we think and act – but we will be part of those systems. We don’t stand outside them. Instead of building tools; we’re building environments we’ll inhabit. 

In our future theater with technology and robots present on stage, the structure of new plays will become more complex and that will shape the drama from within. Actors won’t necessarily be the main players anymore. Shakespeare will be transformed into something even more complex. 

What interests me is taking Shakespeare’s body of work and let the characters meet this new technological and digital environment. What if Hamlet addresses a robot, when the ghost of his father appears as a hologram, when Ophelia’s madness is represented by fragmented avatars that multiply across the stage? 

The question is: “What new forms of drama emerge when humans and machines perform together?” We’re expanding what theater can be. This will lead to new forms of stage presence and performing art. 

Al-Mathabi: How do you bridge the gap between your artistic intuition and the logic-driven world of engineers and programmers? 

Ulrike Quade: I learned their language. They teach us. We build a shared vocabulary in the middle. I study the technologies I work with. I study all the different voices discussing AI – the optimists, the pessimists, the engineers, the ethicists, the artists. That’s how I form my vision. 

I’ve worked with Professor Maaike Bleeker for seven years at Utrecht University. We have an ongoing academic discourse about performance, embodiment, and technology. Our collaboration in Acting Like a Robot laid the foundation for Dramaturgy for Devices , the current four-year research program funded by the Dutch Science Agenda. Engineer Rick van Dugteren from Event Robotics is our engineering KUKA partner, who has accompanied this discourse from day one on. We learned to speak each other’s languages. And Rick animates the KUKA live in the rehearsals, before he writes the code.

The engineer needs to understand that “beauty” and “poetry” are not vague concepts – they’re specific qualities with formal properties. The artist needs to understand that technical constraints aren’t limitations to overcome – they’re creative parameters to work within. 

This long-term partnership matters because bridging the gap between art and engineering isn’t something you do once. It’s a continuous process of translation. 

Al-Mathabi: With the AI ​​​​revolution, are you considering giving your future robots a “brain” to make autonomous movement decisions during a live show? 

Quade: The question assumes autonomy is the goal. I’m not convinced it should be. What interests me about AI in performance is not removing human agency but creating systems where human and machine intelligence interact in real time. The “brain” already exists – it’s distributed between the programmer, the performer, the robot’s sensors, and the audience’s response. 

What interests me about AI in performance is creating systems where human and machine intelligence interact in real time. The AI ​​​​provides the environment – it’s distributed between the programmer, the performer, the robot’s sensors, and the audience’s response. 

Could we program a robot to make choices based on audience reaction, sound levels, or the performer’s position on stage? Yes. Technically, that’s possible now. But the question is: what does that serve? 

If the robot responds to stimuli without human oversight, we lose something crucial – the responsibility, the ethics, the relationship. The machine becomes a black box again, and we’re back to the fairy tale of autonomous technology. 

What I’m exploring instead is collaborative intelligence. The performer makes choices. The robot’s programming offers possibilities. The system creates constraints. Together, they produce something neither could create alone. 

The future I’m interested in isn’t machines performing without us. It’s humans and machines thinking together, each bringing different forms of intelligence to the creative process. The “brain” isn’t in the robot. It’s in the relationship. 

Al-Mathabi: What advice would you give to theater students who fear that technology might eventually “swallow” the human spirit of the performing arts? 

Embrace the change. Start to love it, and it will love you back in return. But understand this: what we perceive as theater is going to change. We will still make theater performances in the future. Yet, as artists and creatives, we are able to imagine and build new systems, thought forms and structures. The artist is extremely important as a voice in this landscape. 

We are able to imagine new forms of societies, and art will play a role in all of them. Our theater venues won’t be isolated as much as they are now. I believe technology, science, and art are moving closer to each other, informing each other as a means to understand the world – to shape it, not to control it. 

The fear that technology will “swallow” human spirit assumes technology is external to us, something that acts upon us. But we are building these technologies. We are making choices about how they function, what values ​​​​​​​​​​they embody, what futures they create. 

The students who will thrive are the ones who see this moment not as an ending but as an expansion. Theater has always evolved – from ritual to Greek drama, from medieval mystery plays to Shakespearean stages, from naturalism to Brecht, from happening to digital performance. 

This is the next evolution. Build it with your values, your aesthetics, your questions and your humanity intact. With all the developments in AI and robotics, it is extremely important that the voice of the artist becomes stronger. We are reshaping the world now. Don’t let that happen to others, be the main player. 

This interview was republished in other publications: Aden Al Ghad newspaper & Middle East Online