Waking Life restages Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped film in three acts by four local dogs. The performance itself was inspired by the hallucinatory poem Zhuangzi Dreaming of a Butterfly (or a Butterfly Dreaming of Zhuangzi) in which the 4th century Chinese poet cannot discern if he is a butterfly who has imagined himself a human or a human who has imagined himself a butterfly. It’s existential uncertainty is re-iterated in Linklater’s script that question consciousness and the nature of reality. Here, in leui of animation, dogs become an auratic other in which to contemplate dimensions of humanity that transcend the bodily experience.

Waking Life restages Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped film in three acts by four local dogs. The performance itself was inspired by the hallucinatory poem Zhuangzi Dreaming of a Butterfly (or a Butterfly Dreaming of Zhuangzi) in which the 4th century Chinese poet cannot discern if he is a butterfly who has imagined himself a human or a human who has imagined himself a butterfly. It’s existential uncertainty is re-iterated in Linklater’s script that question consciousness and the nature of reality. Here, in leui of animation, dogs become an auratic other in which to contemplate dimensions of humanity that transcend the bodily experience.