Giessen City Theater impresses with AI dialogues and a new musical premiere!

Giessen City Theater impresses with AI dialogues and a new musical premiere!

An exciting project has started in Giessen that combines theater and technology in an innovative way. The “LiebDing” project enables visitors to have interactive dialogues with props from the Giessen Theater. It pursues the ambitious goal of promoting sustainable behavior in everyday theater life. The first performance of the musical “The Addam’s Family” takes place today in the Big House and attracts many visitors who want to discover the new experience.

What makes “LiebDing” so special? In the upper foyer, guests can sit down on a bed specially designed for the project. Equipped with tablets or QR codes, they have the opportunity to communicate with the props. This technique brings art and technology together while opening space for a conversation about sustainability in theater. A link to the app required for interaction is directly accessible on the Stadttheater homepage.

Sustainability in focus

The “LiebDing” concept not only integrates digital innovations, but also promotes mindfulness of the theater’s resources. Thanks to AI-generated characters based on a Large Language Model, visitors can have exciting conversations. These characters' sentences come from interviews with theater staff and provide insight into the history and background of the props. The project thus combines sustainability, technology and art in a completely new way.

This ambitious project builds on the experiences from the 2023/24 season, in particular the production “Fifty Degrees Of Now”, which has already been implemented in a climate-neutral manner. The project is intended to provide other theaters and actors in guest performances with an overview of the collection. Upcycling is a top priority: the bed in the foyer was designed from existing materials to avoid waste and promote the creative use of resources.

Events that make you think

Further exciting events are already planned for the future. On June 4th and 5th, 2026, the live performance “Experiment on the Sustainable Order of Strange Things” will captivate the audience. Audiences can expect a journey through “enchanted” rooms in the theater where they are guided into small groups and can talk to the interactive characters. Here, too, the focus is on the topic of sustainability, and visitors should be made aware of how to handle theater props carefully.

The project is not alone. There are around 140 publicly supported theaters in Germany, and a growing number of private theaters and venues show how important sustainability has become in the performing arts. As the Sustainability Action Network reports, the Theater Climate Workshop was also launched to support this increased interest. It enables actors in the theater landscape to exchange ideas about ecological approaches and find new ways for sustainable production.

Thanks to such initiatives, the theater sector is becoming more and more creative and responsible. Of course there is still a lot to do, but with projects like “LiebDing” Gießen is becoming a pioneer in the combination of art and sustainability.