Live Musical in VR
After my one-man-show at The Museum Science Boston, they invited me to stage a “Prototype Performance” at The Mugar Omni Theater in Boston, combining the elements of my solo performance where I performed in virtual reality and where the audience could see my physical self operating/puppetting the technology.
I pitched the narrative of a non-player character (and npc “bot”) in a video game who witnessed the death of the Hero character and was not programmed to process grief and required the audience’s help to navigate the five stages of their emotions.
Based on my experience performing in other live virtual reality projects, I wished to further investigate the responsive role of “Actor-Guide,” theorizing that this relationship with the audience could be inverted by portraying a character without any agency who relied upon attendees to navigate me through open-world environments. NPC became most satisfying when balancing the tension of two dueling formats:
Long-form Improvisational formats similar to talk radio where Hosts allow the audience to call-in and influence the show with unpredictable reactions that range from comical to heartbreaking;
A Book Musical format whereby the performer can command complete control of the story and audience through well-rehearsed, emotionally resonate song, stage craft and spectacle.
Early workshops of Non-Player Character centered around an ebb-and-flow of participation and performance. I reached out to composer Maurice Soque Jr. to help arrange and produce the songs and backing tracks from my early scratch tracks and voice notes.
Through OnBoardXR, I spent the next four months workshopping new music numbers and mechanics around an ebb-and-flow of participation and performance. This 21st-century approach to traditional musical theatre Workshops and Out-Of-Towners used the virtual festival circuit to perform and test with live audiences at FIVARS, Mozilla Festival, and won Best in VR Interactive Immersive Experience at The Queensland (Qld) XR Festival.
Once we had a stable “show,” my technical director, Michael Morran, and I began running and adjusting daily. I would drop off a kit of virtual reality headsets and instructions to friends, sanitizing and charging them between deliveries. Then I’d rush home to perform the live experience and receive feedback to make changes. These virtual “previews” drastically influenced and identified last-minute changes to the narrative, asset design and user experience.
Non-Player Character was first performed as a 15-minute “loop” for eight consecutive audiences, with four audience participants per loop wearing virtual reality headsets while the experience was projected on the giant, domed IMAX screen. I performed live in-headset and wearing a N95 mask to comply with COVID protocols and essentially performed live in virtual reality for four hours, uninterrupted.
As the team continued to explore avenues for hybrid, on-site performances and festivals, we recognized Non-Player Character’s technical advantage to spin up a show any time we wished actually created a blindspot in our pitching materials: lacking a professionally recorded version of the original music.
Maurice Soque Jr. returned to produce and master a Workshop Musical Cast Recording of the prototype performance, pointing out that my live virtual performances could be performed from anywhere with wifi, including Fever Recording Studio in North Hollywood, California. We strategically scheduled and released recordings of the original music to include some of the raw energy and responsiveness from the live, virtual shows. The first single from the album debuted in the Top 25 of iTunes Soundtrack charts.
Non-Player Character now exists as a full-format original musical that can be performed both on-site and virtually, using web-based virtual reality to accelerate through years of traditional development and roadshow processes to premiere and market a new musical theater production.