Supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Economic Affairs, and its Board of Science and Technology of the Executive Yuan, the NTCH invested $2.47mn in 5G infrastructure between 2020 and 2021, and its determination to harness the technology’s potential only increased during the global pandemic.

While the immediate context may have changed, most recently because of the technological disruption that has accompanied the onset of the metaverse, the NTCH’s commitment to delivering innovative live performance continues. As Ting-Chun Lin, the institution’s Director of Programming & International Development and Project Director of its 5G Future Theatre Project, explains, the aim is always to hold up a relevant and resonant mirror to society.

“What is happening to society in the age of the internet?” Lin asks. “We now live in a world that is so internet-based, but what impact might this technology have on the way we interact with one another and on human nature? Will it affect how we understand the world? Will it change the way we tell stories?”

In the case of Lunatic Town, which was performed as a one-of-a-kind event, the lens created by NTCH’s team not only consisted of Asia’s first and largest 5G mmWave-equipped private network, but an internet-based multi-channel over-the-top [OTT] platform, phones and digital cameras, as well as a 600Mbps wireless uplink that allowed high-resolution, 4K live streaming.

The point, Lin explains, wasn’t to use technology for its own sake, but to free creative imaginations and to enable experiences that would have previously been impossible. “We start by testing the limits of the technology and once we know how far it can go we use it in ways that become part of the language of any performance,” she says. “We worked with NTCH’s creative and technical teams, the Institute for Information Industry, Qualcomm Technologies, Wistron Neweb Corporation, Quanta Computer, and Chunghwa Telecom to explore the most that we could do.”

An immersive, interactive, multi-perspective theatrical experience in which live and online audiences were able to interact simultaneously, Lunatic Town was performed in multiple locations, including 1.5ha of a specially installed performance area on an open plaza, a blackbox theatre, a virtual world and a three-channel OTT platform streaming contents from each of the locations in real-time.

The first channel featured live video with actors in the show, who played internet celebrities, using 5G mmWave smartphones to host and live stream their own broadcast channels; the second showed a live stream from the plaza; and the third hosted a virtual space as a recreation of the production. At the same time, the live audience was free to roam in the performance space in the style of immersive theatre. “All three channels were correlated and coordinated by one story,” explains Lin. “Each channel was its own world with a very different world view.”

Such complexity required a specialist multi-disciplinary logistical and production team of almost 400 including talents such as technical experts, creatives and performers, which produced a very different set of challenges.

“It’s very different from a traditional theatrical production, because we’re dealing with technology that’s still evolving,” says Lin. “You not only need people who really understand the technology, you also need people who are very open-minded, who don’t mind dealing with uncertainty and pressure – because whatever disasters happen, the show must go on.”

Because of the actors’ need for mobile connectivity, Lunatic Town employed a 28GHz 5G mmWave network, enabled by Qualcomm Technologies support and test environment provided by Chunghwa Telecom, the largest telecommunications company in Taiwan.

5G mmWave not only allowed for higher bandwidths than ever before but also delivered the extreme capacity, ultra-high throughput and ultra-low latency that was essential to such a performance. Remarkably, Lunatic Town succeeded in attracting a physical and virtual audience of 2.37mn, more than 80 per cent of whom had never been to a theatrical performance before.

For the team behind Lunatic Town, the production was not only a dramatic success but also acted as a test case for unparalleled levels of collaboration between new disciplines, technologies and industries, while pushing the boundaries of live performance. 

“From the development of AR, VR and XR to the advanced integration of the metaverse, virtual experiences are starting to provide audiences with another level of sensual experience,” says Liu. “When the world was virtually shut down due to the pandemic, that blurred the boundaries of the definitions of art works. We now have to go in and out of different fields and address extremely difficult challenges. In terms of the development of the performing arts industry, it is inevitable to try and experiment with the type of works that cannot be easily defined and try to stretch the boundaries as far as possible.”

Although Lunatic Town was a free event hosted with the support of the Taiwanese government and industry partners, NTCH is now considering new business models that can monetise the enhancements enabled by 5G.

“Theatre is a place that creates magic and offers imagination. Creators constantly try to convey the core concepts of their works by building real-time environments and real emotions,” Liu explained.

“We believe that after the use of 5G technology, business models and art works will focus on “how to connect the real and virtual worlds, because future performing art works will have to travel between and cover both of those worlds,” says Liu .

“For us, the real theatre and face-to-face contact remain indispensable because the feedback and flow of overwhelming emotions we receive from our audiences are still the most moving moments in any performance,” she says.

“So while we still need the existence of ‘reality’, we also hope to connect with the ‘virtual’ imagination and will continue to explore different ways of breaking the boundary between them while exploring business models that might be profitable.”