Live and Life in Virtual Theatre: Adapting traditional theatre processes to engage creatives in digital immersive technologies
2021
The Round is an augmented reality platform that allows users at home to watch live
streamed 3D characters being produced by real actors in a motion capture suite. The
project holds the idea of “liveness” in high regard and considers it an important
part of the theatrical experience that needed to be preserved in the creation of an
at-home, digital experience. The live theatre experience in itself is often enormously
technical with pre-recorded visual and audio experiences that are designed to be repeated.
We ask the question, what is live theatre and how does this map to live streamed digital
experiences, particularly involving motion capture? Whilst liveness, in this context,
refers to the experience of the audience and their relationship with the performer,
there is another aspect of live that affects the process of creating and designing
a piece of digital theatre. The ability to affect and determine results from “live”
changes to ideas on stage from the theatrical design team became an important part
of the iteration of the production itself. This is part of the traditional theatre
making process which doesn’t easily map into the limitations of digital immersive
content creation. This project however attempted to rectify that by introducing innovative
technologies that allowed existing theatrical control systems and the skills used
to run them to operate Unreal Engine 4 game engine, live for the show. By retaining
traditional theatrical equipment and skills, the entire production team who were all
new to delivering theatre in a virtual medium, were able to adapt their existing practices
and approach to communication in order to maintain fast design iteration and effective
collaboration within an entirely new digital medium. This paper looks at the creation
of the first prototype of The Round and the effect of using traditional theatrical
technologies and processes in combination with real-time platforms that are trying
to adapt to the live theatre model. Whilst trying to understand the role of the live
design process in this context, the subject of “liveness” will be discussed from an
audience point of view and the necessity of “live” with or without “life” in the medium
the audience is watching.
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