*Gush alert!* One of my favorite things about Ashley Clements is her unyielding obsession with the history of live storytelling. From Shakespeare to Sondheim, her time not performing is almost always spent researching other artists, currently through a monthly deep dive on the history of musical theater. This morning Ashley gave me a deliciously unprompted dissertation on the “Mega Musical” with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cameron Mackintosh, and Trevor Nunn redefining commercial theater in the 1980’s in ways that still impact how Broadway and the West End develop and produce new work today.
These were effectively commercial entertainment products that were so elevated, they eclipsed what any competitor was producing at the time (one could make parallels to the “Blockbuster Model” of Hollywood).
Ashley pointed out that we typically confuse the term “mega” to mean “highly profitable” which is actually a retroactive benchmark rather than an analysis of the developmental components that made these works stand out in the marketplace: size, scale, and spectacle. The money came later (and infrequently). In fact, CATS originally struggled to get investors so Webber took out a second mortgage on his home to infuse capital in the original production and many mega-musicals don’t ever become bankable hits - “and that’s show biz, kid.”
This year I’ve begun re-examining how I talk about virtual reality performance. By anchoring the speculative future of virtual reality storytelling in the known history of traditional theater movements, we may better understand the medium, and provide better education and advocacy to investors and programmers.
This perspective also seeks to eradicate the notion of “competitors” in a singular market, but instead welcome all creators as allies and advocates of a shared tool across sub-genres and sub-movements of 21st-century storytelling.
(A quick request: If any of my ramblings here are of interest to you, I’d appreciate you citing me and my work as my thesis here is one of attribution.)
One of the biggest traps with any new technology or trend is the temptation to insist that everything is “new.” Ironically, the long history of human innovation provides a snarky anecdote for this with the expression, “reinventing the wheel.” Often the most successful evolutions of any industry don’t ignore the past, but rather provide scaffolding on top of existing and sustaining inventions.
When considering Live Extended Reality Performances (LPXR) as representative of preceding theatrical movements, now leveraging a shared technology, these seminal works become indicative of a broader trend, empowering consumer-creators to harness new tools of spectacle.
Like how the history of independent cinema was evangelized when “everyone got a camera in their pocket,” LPXR offers insight into a future where anyone can build their own virtual venue, theme park, or story-verse and audiences begin to ‘encounter,’ rather than ‘consume’ new storytelling content.
The 2020 production of my play, Jettison, during the shut down, centered its research around using virtual reality to circumvent some of the preventative costs to mounting any theater production. However, the mega-musical lens offers better insight into what VR truly provides any storyteller - “The 3 S’s” (size, scale and spectacle) in parallel to the acknowledgment that initial innovation relies on self-producing and self-financing in the early days of what later became a highly profitable and genre defining movement.
As it so happens, next month, several virtual reality producers are holding “encore performances” of some of the most acclaimed LPXR works. So you can go see them for yourself and analyze how they fit into the larger tapestry of the history of live arts.
XR FOR THE “MEGA-MUSICAL” MOVEMENT
I’ll selfishly start with Non-Player Character as a near identical parallel to the mega-musical movement using the immersive web. Like the legacy of Macintosh/Webber/Nunn, the themes and sounds of NPC are mainstream pop “singles,” staged in the nostalgic atmosphere of a low-poly video game. Much like early mega-musicals, the development and production of my musical (and the OnBoardXR showcase) have only been possible via personal debt and vulnerability to criticism of “spectacle over substance” choosing to celebrate rough edges in favor of prioritizing interactions previously unseen by most audiences.
The story follows a non-player character in a video game who witnesses the death of the Hero character and turns to the audience to help navigate the five stages of grief. Much like the original production of CATS, parts of the performance are as much a “ride” as a “show” with the ability to animate the audience through the 3D virtual space and trigger animations, scene changes and interactive puzzles. One live actor (me) switches between multiple characters/avatars and pivots between total improvisation (following the audience’s guidance through open worlds) and technically precise songs to subtly “steer” the narrative.
However, Non-Player Character’s most impressive feature is its scale. Using web-based virtual reality, the VR experience can be accessed and entered on almost any web-browser, including vr headsets, computers, tablets and phones. Four “active participants” are embodied as “players” with the option for invisible “ghost participants” to join and move freely through the 3D experience without embodiment. One of these invisible attendees can be used as a dedicated “camera person” to broadcast the experience to livestream platforms or be projected onto large-format screens.
This allows Non-Player Character to truly scale to any audience or venue from one-on-one virtual performances… to black box playhouses… to IMAX cineplexes. For licensing and touring, the “show in the box” becomes a “show in the cloud” that brings mega-musical spectacle to anyone with WIFI.
Recently, technical director Michael Morran created a secondary webapp for seated or virtual spectators to scan a QR code and access a programme on their mobile device. Throughout the performance, Michael can push options to the audience’s screens to vote on key decisions, spawn objects in the virtual world, light up the room with colorful GIFs, and even sing-a-long to bouncing-ball-style lyrics.
Finally, musical director Maurice Soque Jr’s decision to record and release the workshop album as singles has unlocked a non-VR audience on Spotify and TikTok, with the first release ‘Reprogram Me’ earning over 100,000 streams and debuting on the iTunes Top 25 Soundtrack Chart.
XR FOR THE “LITTLE THEATER” MOVEMENT
OnBoardXR is a creative think tank recognized as the most prolific producer of live, web-based virtual reality, already supporting and showcasing over 50 cutting-edge, device-agnostic 3D events on the immersive web. Their business model is most comparable to the “Little Theater” movement of the early 1900’s that resulted in accessible, community-driven, avant-garde theater across America, seen today in regional playhouses that still support grassroots shows and education. OnBoardXR invited anyone in the world to develop, stage and monetize their work without any special hardware, software or coding background through advocacy and knowledge sharing. 30% of audiences reported OnBoardXR as their “first ever VR or Live VR experience,” attending on VR headsets, computers, tablets and phones.
The volunteers and sustaining members behind OnBoardXR recognized the artistic and economic impact of creating an entry point for newcomers to explore their creative practice using extended reality tools; literally onboarding the next generation of audiences and artists. Many past participants have used their OnBoardXR prototype to pursue grants, funding, production, employment, or continued artistic development.
*The below experiences are seminal works of this emerging industry and my involvement in them is either as a hired performer or participant. The inclusion of these American productions for historical comparison to American theater movements is merely for academic purposes and the comments contained herein are merely the opinion of the author. Please note, many of these experiences may only be accessible on certain devices or by downloading certain software.
XR FOR THE “SITE SPECIFIC” MOVEMENT
Many of you have seen me reference my #FerrymanFamily on social media. Ferryman Collective is one of the most celebrated American producers of LPXR, exclusively on VRChat, as seen in film festivals around the world, regularly attending and winning top awards at SXSW, Venice Film Festival, Raindance and Kaohsiung Film Festival. Their work is most comparable to the “store front” movement of the 1960’s, leading to the early “Off Broadway” community to take over non-traditional venues for rich, experimental performance, most recognized recently by the work of Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More.
Ferryman Collective’s team (including Deidre V. Lyons, Stephen Butchko, Braden Roy, Brian Tull, Whitton Frank) often identifies existing VR builders and/or worlds and adapts storylines around the existing assets, resulting in story-verses that would be inaccessible to any other independent producer. One of their most frequent collaborators Christopher Lane Davies, builds under the handle Screaming Colour and won a artistic residency in Thailand based on his festival-winning worlds. Ferryman Collective also frequently engages an ensemble of immersive theater actors who learn the same characters, script and blocking so multiple performances can run simultaneously to increase ticketing while maintaining intimacy for the audience.
Like my Jettison, Ferryman Collective’s Welcome To Respite was originally an immersive stage play, adapted for virtual reality, as a collaboration with Co-Act Productions. One audience member embodied a child experiencing dissociative identity disorder with live actors portraying the child’s mother, father, and a variety of visions the child encounters. Ferryman Collective’s follow up work, Gumball Dreams used the existing VR Chat world “Gumball Lounge,” built by Screaming Colour, for which writer and director, Deidre Lyons, adapted a compelling narrative to guide the audiences through the world, animations and music.
Ferryman Collective deserves praise for exemplifying a path toward the “Off Broadway” model for LPXR, repeatedly finding accolades in the critical community with sustainable ticket revenues in an early market.
XR FOR THE “THEME PARK” MOVEMENT
Meta Movie is possibly the longest running LPXR production, originally built on the platform NEOS, accessible via PCVR (I used SteamVR tethered to my headset), and now rebuilt and expanded on the platform Resonite. Meta Movie’s business model is most comparable to a “theme park” or “renaissance fair” whereby an expansive, fantastical playground is built for consumers to attend in-character and navigate an open world with an ensemble of live, in-character performers. Bringing The Three S’s to virtual LARP-ing (Live Action Role Playing), Meta Movie rivals its more commercial IRL competitors, like themed cruises and Disney’s 2-Night role-playing Star Wars Galactic Star Cruiser experience.
Depending on the performance, 1-4 participants are “Hero Players” who freely encounter, investigate, and battle the characters and story. Secondary tickets are sold for side-characters or “iBots” and select shows stream a third-person POV to viewers on YouTube and Twitch to increase ticketing while maintaining intimacy for the in-world audience.
Creator Jason Moore and the team have primarily self-invested in this endeavor with occasional windfalls in awards and the (sometimes positive) volatility of their platform’s in-game currency, however Meta Movie is a triumph for the storytelling potential of “the metaverse” and the future of theme parks.
XR FOR THE “STREET PERFORMANCE” MOVEMENT
Since 2019, The Technodramatists have continuously merged physical and virtual elements through groundbreaking live augmented reality (AR) performance. Other artists-technologists like Black Chick Studios, Hexagram, Koryn Wicks and Odeon Theatrical mix the use of live and pre-recorded augmented elements to stage stories in unexpected environments.
As consumer we are very accustomed to AR “filters” through social apps, like Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. It may seem controversial, but I believe that AR performance effectively represents the history of combining performative spectacle and folk art in pop-up locations, also known as Street Performance. The American legacy of this art form is rooted in the end of the touring circuses when acts of great spectacle no longer had a venue.
Today’s impressive augmented creations scale storytelling experiences to street corners, mountain tops, and literally anywhere the audience wants to experience them. As the medium matures, we are seeing the synergy of designing specific AR experiences to map onto specific geolocales or destinations, like the recent Gorillaz music video in Times Square.
XR FOR THE “CIRCUS” MOVEMENT
The Under Presents is one of the most beloved virtual reality experiences that will likely define the industry and genre for years to come. Tender Claws and Pie Hole created an artistically stunning video game where users challenge their relationship with time and space, moving through a multi-user world. Participants were not given microphone permission and could only communicate through gesture or snapping their avatar’s fingers.
The Under Presents began hiring live actors to perform small cabaret acts and immersive encounters, ultimately staging their own adaptation of Shakespeare’s Tempest as a main stage performance.
I have long considered how to contextualize this work and the most compelling correlation I can find is Cirque du Soleil’s model of the modern circus to design an entire venue for a specific performance’s intentions. These bespoke spaces can accomplish spectacle and scale that is simply unparalleled in the majority of playhouses throughout the world. However, they are so deeply customized for one specific story and aesthetic that it becomes nearly impossible to replicate, tour or stage new works.
As such, we have not seen another live theater offering from The Under Presents since they dominated and captivated the entire virtual reality community in 2020-21. Historically speaking, I believe The Under Presents may be the ultimate realization of Spectacle - the dream for a creator to build their own beskpoke platform and stage their exact vision.
Looking back to Andrew Lloyd Webber, his Starlight Express required performers to roller skate around the stage (and is perhaps most famous for injuries). The most long-running production of the show in Germany built a dedicated, bespoke, roller-rink for this purpose. But what other productions can ever be staged in such a venue? For now, their impressive Scale may ultimately prevent them from scaling.
XR FOR THE “ESCAPE THE ROOM” MOVEMENT
Another pandemic favorite that I believe will remain a touchstone for the immersive industry is Adventure Labs Dr Crumb's School for Disobedient Pets. Their model was an virtual reality escape-the-room game played alongside a live actor who manifested as different characters and controlled users’ abilities.
The modern American escape room trend is believed to have begun with True Adventures in Indianapolis and during the shutdown several escape room companies pivoted into virtual extensions of their experiences. One of my all-time-favorites during the quarantine was Hourglass Escapes hosting virtual games where remote audiences via zoom instructed an actor to explore the on-sight room and solve puzzles for them.
Like The Under Presents, Adventure Lab created its own bespoke software, built in Unity3D, designed for 1-4 participants per show, and brought delight to players around the world. The projected business model suggested one day performers could host their own “instance” of the game to sell tickets, however the project shut down after its first year due to limited adoption of the Meta Quest 1 headset.
Many LPXR experiences equate their gamified mechanics as similar to escape rooms, but it is important to categorize the explicit intention of creating an escape-the-room narrative experience separately from other “playable theater.”
XR FOR THE “DIGITAL THEATER” MOVEMENT
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Dream is considered one of the seminal works from the COVID shut down. This twenty-minute, movement-based adaptation of A Midsummer Nights Dream was performed in the Unreal Engine and live-streamed to audiences by the thousands around the world. Audiences watched a 2D split screen of performers filmed in a small black-box motion-capture volume and the 3D virtual world. Size, Scale, and Spectacle!
I want to be clear that I found this work to be breathtaking and even wept during the presentation, however it’s important to mention the audience had no agency to move through the 3D space and only the lead performer used virtual reality. Therefore, I rather consider Dream (along with Fake Friend’s Circle Jerk) to be the defining works of “The Zoom Theatre Movement” whereby the boundaries of live performance within a 2D livestream were fully realized beyond traditional cinema or web video.
Much of “Zoom Theater” was initially performed and experienced by necessity of the 2020 lockdown, using video conferencing “Brady Bunch Boxes” to perform “together” in real time. Some theater-makers pivoted into producing pre-recorded works that more closely resemble the the Webseries movement in 2008 and might be better categorized as Film. Artists who chose to explore and challenge the limitations of real-time broadcasting transitioned into a secondary movement, recognized by The Young-Howze Theater Journal as “digital theater,” a still growing and developing field.
Therefore, Dream and Circle Jerk might be considered the height of what was technologically possible during the 2020 shutdown to provide maximum spectacle and maximum scale for audience awareness and patronage, giving legitimacy to (and ushering in) today’s “Digital Theater Movement.”
As vTubbing becomes more ubiquitous, and average creators and consumers experience motion tracking of 3D characters and environments from a fixed 2D lens; I believe we will see many more groundbreaking works in this genre.
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There are, of course, many other remarkable productions and artists, from 360 Films on Youtube, Lip-Sync Concerts in Rec Room, and more. Not to mention groundbreaking works from the international community. Today’s inadvertent history lesson of the mega-musical merely inspired a quick look at how some LPXR is rooted in the proud traditions and movements of American Theater. (And I’m not the only one.)
Virtual Reality offers a powerful opportunity for storytellers everywhere - perhaps even more powerful than putting a camera in every creator-consumer’s pocket.
In the storytelling arts, there is a rich history of innovation and experimentation. All artists simultaneously bring their unique voice to creative expression while also standing on the shoulders of giants who built the standards for creative expression through movement, pose, sound, text, image and lens.
In a profession that relies on creative copyright and ownership of one’s work, one would assume we would want to celebrate and attribute the craft and discovery that proceeds and inspires our work. However the tech culture of “first movers” and the Jerry Media trend of “aggregating” the work of others as ones own brand can threaten the performing arts greatest tool: collaboration.