Touring VR Theater
Early this year, I attended a preview of Ferryman Collective’s (Para, Krampusnacht) latest co-pro with CoAct Productions in VR Chat. Severance Theory: Welcome To Respite is an adaptation of an in-person, non-traditional theater piece (like my play, Jettison) that pushes the boundaries of game mechanics within an interactive live performance in VR Chat. One audience member moves through the experience as a child named “Alex,” with Dissociative identity disorder while two performers play their parents and several other smaller characters. This production does a great job of embracing the opportunities in theater to alter space and perspective for the audience. The world can morph and “break” while the actors pretend nothing is happening to simulate the frustration and challenge of suffering from a psychological trauma.
This Summer, as the project received acceptance to many immersive festivals / events around the world, the producers struggled with the familiar challenge of “scalability” to literally “be multiple places at one time.” So much of my obsession with Live VR has been seeking thousands-years old stage craft to address new technology - we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, we just need to connect the spokes. Brilliantly, Welcome To Respite borrowed the established practice of “touring” a successful theater production by holding a casting call to create four (4) concurrent casts to rehearse and perform the show.
First, we were provided with a sample of the script and invited to perform “on stage” in VR Chat where the producers could spin up an instance of the world and give us one-on-one direction. Anyone who has understudied before might recognize this opportunity to simultaneously show off your knowledge of the existing production with your own flavor. I was actually traveling at the time and had an absolute blast logging in at my audition time at my parent’s house, rehearsing in my VR Chat Lobby before being invited into the world to audition, and then logging out and going about my day.
I was offered a role in the “Crayon Cast” that splits 1/4th of the performance dates, based on availability of my fellow ensemble members. The original cast, Deidre Lyons and Stephen Butchko along with Director Lyndsie Scoggin met with all the casts in VR Chat for roughly 6 rehearsals to take turns learning all the triggers and choreography. The technical team of WTR has (masterfully) build the worlds with hidden UI that only the performers see so the two actors can spin up a room and run an entire show without any crew! Much of our time was learning the nuance of how to reliably run and troubleshoot these triggers as well as practice “onboarding” the audience during pre-show. Then, each “mentor” would oversee one of the three casts running the entire show.
Between rehearsals and shows we, communicate (and occasionally meet up for game nights) on a private Discord channel where I can always check for world-updates, audience sign ups, or even schedule changes. That’s right! Because we now have four reliable teams “on deck” if something comes up in someone else’s schedule, they can reach out to the Discord for someone to “cover” their shift - just like working at a restaurant. This has given us an opportunity to mix and match casts, and it has been an honor and pleasure acting opposite all our leading ladies, Deidre Lyons, Whitton Frank, Lyndsie Scoggin, Elliot Addams, Kelly Jones, and Lee Erdman.
The Discord is also a hub during the show as our “backstage” communication. So imagine wearing a VR headset logged into the experience while wearing headphones in one ear to hear audience interactions without their audio “looping” back over my microphone. Then in the other ear, I have a bluetooth headphone to my cell phone, which is logged into a Discord audio channel. If I ever need to sidebar with my fellow actor, I mute myself in VR Chat and unmute on Discord to “whisper” backstage. We are joined in this room by the unyieldingly talented and patient Brian Tull who acts as our house manager and box office to help ticket holders struggling to log into VR Chat.
Putting all this together, Welcome To Respite has become a bit of a festival darling and empowered the original creators to laser focus on shows and interviews with decision makers in the larger interactive industry, while a stable, sustainable show performs for audiences every week, all over the world, at events like La Biennale Venice Film Festival, Raindance Immersive, IndieCADE, Kaohsiung Film Festival - 高雄電影節 and one-offs for groups and the community.
