OnBoard-ing New Voices (WebXR)
In March, we successfully produced a One Act Festival in a Web Browser, mounting a “dark ride” anthology of four short live performances using our learnings from prototyping live theater in virtual reality. During that same month, I produced The 5th Wall Forum’s virtual Reveal of nine XR prototypes for live performance, many of which have gone on to find early funding, festivals or inspired new collaborations. Both events illuminated the importance of a first-look incubator and sandbox for live performing artists interested in experimenting with extended reality technologies. This is how I accidentally became the Artistic Director of a virtual xr theater collective.
For the Summer Season, we supported six new works while getting under the hood of the Mozilla Hubs codebase to create a “stage manger system” for performers and staff to trigger avatars, waypoints, objects, media and scenes. Jettison’s Roman Miletitch oversaw the primary development of the system as our chief technologist and Active Replica’s Stephen Flach stepped in as our administrative stage management. Embracing the inside joke of being “pirates in uncharted waters,” the performances were themed “Below Deck” with Dasha Kittredge and myself as quarreling pirates emceeing the transitions.
PAINTING PIRATES!
STRINGS: PRISONER
SMART HOME
MAIDEN VOYAGE
HOURON DESERT
WHO AM I? WHERE AM I?
AURORA AWAKENING
We sold over 70 tickets across three “tiers” of interactivity: 29% were Active Participants often in headsets who wanted be a part of the action, similar to sitting (or volunteering to be brought) on stage; 47% chose to be Spectators often on a 2D web browser exploring with limited participation inside the experience, similar to sitting in the Orchestra section; and 29% tuned in as Viewers on the Twitch livestream of the show, which we called our “Virtual Balcony.”
Audience surveys revealed over half our audience reported OnBoardXR as their first live VR performance and one of our attendees noted it was their first ever VR experience. We were especially surprised to discover that 100% of our audience opted to pay something for their Pay-What-You-Want ticket, averaging $11.00 per ticket while 1/4th of our audience felt comfortable paying over $20 for their ticket.
Almost immediately after we wrapped, many were asking about “the Fall” and we began to ingest feedback and insights from the first two OnBoardXR series. Our two primary pain points are the lack of Resources and Organization, which could be expected from a labor of love from a group of rag tag artists burning the midnight oil.
To address these concerns, this Fall we hope to formalize the process by which we identify and intake new artists/works; codify the codebase version history to document what is stable (and what is held together by duct tape); and better define our hierarchy and relationships to help communicate and convert our value with each other, our audience and the marketplace.
Want to join us? Anyone can fill out our Questionnaire to propose a project for the next season!